The Finnish contemporary composer Lotta Wennäkoski (Maarit Kytöharju)
The statistics seem sobering and perhaps contradict subjective perception – music by female composers is still far too rare in our country’s concert halls. The German Symphony Orchestra Berlin (DSO) wants to remedy this deficiency in the current season. The ensemble, which is particularly closely linked to Deutschlandradio via the Rundfunk-Orchester und -Khöre gGmbH, has adopted a quasi-feminist repertoire policy. In our broadcasts we regularly reflect the content of the concerts under the motto “No concert without a composer”.
In the field of new music, it is now a given that female composers are heard just as often as their male colleagues. The DSO’s two concerts at Ultraschall Berlin, the festival for new music, have just proven this. The ratio was even two to one. But if we go further back in music history, we have to search for the names of the composers more and more closely, the closer we get to Romantic, Classical and Baroque music. In this respect, it is logical that Hildegard von Bingen is represented in a concert with Kent Nagano. Because it was with her, as with her minstrel-singing colleagues, that European music history began. She is probably the only female composer to be canonized to this day, while her male successors such as Bach, Mozart and Beethoven only enjoy the status of saints or even deities among their admirers.
Now the DSO Berlin wants to honor the female music geniuses. Or do we put the male spirits in a more normal, more humane light when we show the great qualities of their composing contemporaries? Clara Schumann and Fanny Hensel had family ties to the romantics Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and had to put their own ambitions on hold. In the DSO’s programs they appear as artists with equal rights.
Chief conductor Robin Ticciati gave the starting signal for feminist programming last season with his great opera project – an impressive rediscovery was “The Wreckers” by Ethel Smyth, a grande dame of European musical emancipation and the pursuit of political equality. The overture to this stirring opera appears as a re-presentation in the concert on February 24th under Ticciati’s direction. Another excerpt from this opera will be heard four days later in the “Debut in Deutschlandfunk Kultur” in the Philharmonie Berlin.
It is even better if there is a woman at the front of the conducting podium or if the solo concert in the program gives a female musician the chance to shine. It’s not uncommon for a lot or everything to come together – and anyone who looks at the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin will notice that women are already in the majority in some registers.
Three very different sound worlds open the concert under the direction of the young German conductor Ruth Reinhardt on February 3rd. The imaginative and sound-sensitive language of the Finnish contemporary composer Lotta Wennäkoski meets the dazzling piano concerto of the American DJ and composer Mason Bates and the heartwarming romanticism of the Czech master Antonín Dvořák in his fifth symphony.
Works by female composers also played an important role in the DSO Berlin’s recording project with conductor Howard Griffiths for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. Julia Kaiser will present this largely unknown music from three generations in “Playing Ways” on February 21st.
In general, the DSO Berlin, together with the Deutschlandradio programs, sees its task as being to perform good music that has remained unknown and to rescue it from oblivion. The mechanisms of music history have often been unfair, especially when it comes to works by female composers.
SENDING NOTES
Sun., February 4th, 8:03 p.m
concert
Berlin Philharmonic
Recording from February 3, 2024
Daniil Trifonov, piano German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Management: Ruth Reinhardt
Wed., February 21st, 10:05 p.m
Playing styles/home game
100 Years of Türkiye – The DSO explores Turkish orchestral music
Sun., March 3, 8:03 p.m
concert
Debut on Deutschlandfunk Kultur
Recording from February 28, 2024
Berlin Philharmonic
Mario Bruno, flute
Vanessa Porter, percussion
German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Lead: Adam Hickox
Fri., March 22, 8:03 p.m
concert
Berlin Philharmonic
Recording from February 24, 2024
Benjamin Grosvenor, piano
Gentlemen of the Berlin Radio Choir
German Symphony Orchestra Berlin
Management: Robin Ticciati
deutschlandfunkkultur.de/konzert
dso-berlin.de
2024-01-15 16:03:33
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