500 Years of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester

The Bayerische Staatsorchester has one of the strongest traditions of all German orchestras: it can trace its roots back to the Münchner Hofkapelle, that first flourished in the reign of Duke Albrecht V, when it was directed by no lesser figure than Orlando di Lasso. To mark its 500th anniversary, the Bayerische Staatsorchester and its new General Music Director Vladimir Jurowski present a work full of superlatives at Musikfest Berlin: Richard Strauss’s “An Alpine Symphony”, which requires an extravagantly large orchestra including a heckelphone, four Wagner tubas, two harps, an organ, a wind machine, a thunder sheet, cowbells, a tam-tam and a celesta plus a 16-strong off-stage orchestra for the hunting scene and its echo effects that includes 12 horns. Strauss had the initial idea for this sound fresco that at times assumes cinematic proportions when he was fifteen years old, after a full day’s hiking in the mountains near Lake Walchen had left a profound impression on him. The programme includes another notable work in musical history in the form of Alban Berg’s moving violin concerto “To the Memory of an Angel”: an instrumental requiem in response to the premature death of Manon Gropius, whose transfiguring apotheosis contains echoes of Bach’s cantata “O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort” (Oh eternity, you word of thunder) BWV 60. Also requiem-like in character is the Third Symphony, “White Interment”, by the Kyiv-based composer Victoria Polevá, whose work has often been labelled as “sacred minimalism”: this contemplative music is guided by poetic sound tapes and slowly mutating textures that are bound together in a single huge lament.