Concert information
Musikfest Berlin
Info
Two compelling works from contrasting worlds: With lightness, elegance and wit, infused with Spanish rhythms, Manuel de Falla’s ballet The Three-Cornered Hat tells of a young wife who fends off the advances of a provincial governor. Leoš Janáček’s rhapsody Taras Bulba, by contrast, unfolds with elemental power, portraying the fate of a Ukrainian Cossack leader who loses first his two sons and then his own life in the struggle against Polish occupiers. Sir Simon Rattle, former Chief Conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, also leads the world premiere of a concerto written by Cathy Milliken for our cor anglais player, Dominik Wollenweber.
Artists
Berliner Philharmoniker
Sir Simon Rattle conductor
Rinat Shaham mezzo-soprano
Dominik Wollenweber cor anglais
Programme
Manuel de Falla
El sombrero de tres picos (The Three-Cornered Hat), ballet music
Rinat Shaham mezzo-soprano
Interval
Cathy Milliken
why feather yellow, Concerto for Cor anglais and Orchestra (premiere), commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker Foundation
Dominik Wollenweber cor anglais
Leoš Janáček
Taras Bulba, Rhapsody for Orchestra
Additional information
Duration ca. 1 hour and 45 minutes (incl. 20 minutes interval)
Dates and tickets
Main Auditorium
28 to 89 €
Introduction
19:15
with Johannes David Wolff
Series D: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
28 to 89 €
Introduction
19:15
with Johannes David Wolff
Series M: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Main Auditorium
28 to 89 €
Introduction
18:15
with Johannes David Wolff
Series C: Concerts with the Berliner Philharmoniker
Background
Music with open windows
On composer Cathy Milliken and her new work “why feather yellow”
Milliken is not only a highly sought-after oboist and composer; she also develops new concert formats and experimental ways of making music. Making boundaries porous – between composition and improvisation, between musicians and audience – is one of the declared aims of her work.
Cor anglais player Dominik Wollenweber on “why feather yellow”
Video
Dominik Wollenweber on “why feather yellow”
“I’m playing sounds I’ve never played before,” says cor anglais player Dominik Wollenweber of Cathy Milliken’s new concerto for the instrument. Watch the video to find out why he’s especially looking forward to performing it.
Biography
Sir Simon Rattle
Simon Rattle began learning percussion at the age of four, later adding piano and violin, and entered the Royal Academy of Music in London when he was just sixteen. His work with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – first as principal conductor and artistic adviser, then as music director – established his international reputation. Rattle first conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker in 1987, in Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. After many years as a regular guest, he became the orchestra’s chief conductor and artistic director in 2002.
His sixteen-year tenure brought lasting changes. The Education Programme was established, with Cathy Milliken as its first director, and the orchestra’s repertoire broadened, particularly in early and contemporary music. Major projects included symphonic cycles devoted to Sibelius, Mahler, Brahms, Schumann and Beethoven, Peter Sellars’s staged versions of Bach’s St Matthew Passion and St John Passion, and the introduction of the Late Night concert series. Since stepping down in 2018, Rattle has remained closely associated with the Berliner Philharmoniker. He was music director of the London Symphony Orchestra from 2017 to 2023 and has been chief conductor of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus since 2023.
Rinat Shaham
Rinat Shaham has been acclaimed around the world as a “sensational Carmen” (The Independent). Since making her role debut at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2004, she has sung Carmen in more than 45 productions, including in Vienna, Rome, Berlin, Munich, New York, Tel Aviv and Sydney, as well as at numerous opera houses across the United States. But the Israeli mezzo-soprano’s repertoire extends far beyond Bizet, from Mozart and Verdi to Bernstein and Berio. For Shaham, singing and acting are inseparable, grounded in a psychological understanding of character: “I like singers who are not really the old-type singers who just stand on stage and sing loud. That’s going away because we’re taking opera into the cinema, people expect to not only hear the opera singers but to see them. So acting skills are more important, as are the looks.”
Shaham comes from a musical family and trained in the United States at the Curtis Institute of Music. She sang Judith in a recording of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle that was named best opera recording by BBC Music Magazine. Her other roles include Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia at the National Theatre in Tokyo, and Blanche in Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at New York City Opera. She made her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker in March 2011 as the Page of Herodias in a concert performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome.
Dominik Wollenweber
“The dark sound of the cor anglais comes into its own in lyrical, melancholic and reflective moments,” says Dominik Wollenweber. Claudio Abbado once described him as “the best cor anglais player of all time”. “The sound of the instrument comes from within the body. Playing the cor anglais is a very physical thing.” Born in Munich – his father played cor anglais in the Bavarian State Orchestra – Wollenweber’s path to the instrument was not a direct one. He began on the flute before studying oboe with Hagen Wangenheim at the Munich Academy of Music and Simon Dent at the Richard Strauss Conservatory.
He continued his training with Hansjörg Schellenberger as a scholar at the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Karajan Academy. During this time, he was also principal oboe of the European Union Youth Orchestra under Claudio Abbado. In 1993, he successfully auditioned for the vacant cor anglais position with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Since then, his playing has become an unmistakable part of the orchestra’s sound: “Most of the time, I only play once everyone else has fallen silent. Alongside his orchestral work, Wollenweber is active as a soloist and chamber musician and has also worked extensively with the Baroque oboe, including as a member of Ensemble Berlin Prag. He has served as a woodwind tutor for the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra and has held a guest professorship at Berlin’s Hanns Eisler School of Music since 2000.
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