Alan Gilbert Presents American Music at the Elbphilharmonie | NDR.de - culture - music

Status: 02/11/2022 11:45 a.m

A week-long festival entitled “Age of Anxiety” will start in the Elbphilharmonie, focusing on 20th-century American culture.

by Stephen Storm

“It has always been my dream to bring to Europe the most important works of American music, the works that I love and believe in,” says Alan Gilbert. Even as a young conductor he was asked to perform music from the USA. But he always refused: “I never wanted to present myself as an American conductor. I see myself as a citizen of the world who feels equally at home in Europe, Asia or the USA.”

Gilbert has lived with his family in Stockholm for years and works worldwide. Now the time has come for his festival. Gilbert focuses on the USA in the 20th century. A nation in transition and upheaval, with opportunities and hopes, fears and crises: “It’s exciting how composers in the USA were inspired by that time. Wonderful works were created around the Second World War, which I like very much and which I like conducting. These works opened the door wide for the next generation of composers.”

Aaron Copland takes center stage in Age of Anxiety

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The USA in the 20th century with its diverse currents and influences is the focus of the NDR Festival in February 2022. more

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“Age of Anxiety”. The Age of Fear. The title comes from a 1947 poem by British-American writer WH Auden, which Leonard Bernstein used as the basis for his Second Symphony. In “Age of Anxiety”, Auden addresses the stressed age. An epoch of worry and unrest, the search for identities and ideals. Alan Gilbert compares the time then and now: “It’s a strange time in the world right now. It’s just an absolute mess in America politically. People don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ve got the time in the US around I looked back around WW2 and found there are many parallels to today.”

The focus of the festival is Aaron Copland. The American composer is the creator of the typical American orchestral sound. But his works also contained political explosives and were viewed more than critically in the “McCarthy era” because of their supposedly too left-wing views. But works by Samuel Barber, Charles Ives and Erich Wolfgang Korngold are also among Alan Gilbert’s favourites: “My goal was not to draw a complete picture of American music. That would be almost impossible, because America’s music is too rich for that , there are too many different styles. We want to present the important and representative works from this period.”

connecting people

Concerts with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the NDR Bigband, with the Ensemble Musikfabrik in the NDR series “The New Work”, and with top-class artists such as the Violinist Leonidas Kavakos, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and conductor Marin Alsop present a fascinating side of American music: “Music can speak to people. It’s not about right or wrong. We want to connect people through music. Try that we always do when we make music.”

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