City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla & Vilde Frang

A very warm welcome to Klarafestival!

Flanders Festival Brussels, Klara and our partners are delighted to greet you once again. “I believe audiences aren’t just listening. They are actively contributing”, festival artist Barbara Hannigan remarked in an interview. Concerts are an interaction between the audience, artists and anyone who is contributing to those magic moments in front of or behind the scenes. Together we ‘become’ music. 

As a conductor and soprano, Hannigan is a global reference point. With her, classical music becomes a contemporary and unique experience. This is an inspiration to Klarafestival as the largest broadcast festival in Belgium. Her versatile talent is sure to enrapture you, as is that of the many Belgian and international artists who connect past and present with musical stories.

Klarafestival opens in style with Hannigan as conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra. After that, you will hear and see her with young musicians from her mentorship project Equilibrium Young Artists. In no fewer than 25 concerts, we present top talent including Les Talens Lyriques, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Vilde Frang, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra with Víkingur Ólafsson. Klarafestival also treasures creation. The film concert Reich/Richter as a symbiosis of Gerhard Richter’s paintings and the music of Steve Reich; the creation Counterforces by composer Frederik Croene to text by poet Dominique de Groen; and the music theatre production Prey by Kris Verdonck with a composition by Annelies Van Parys will surprise you!

This and all other concerts are possible thanks to the collaboration with our cultural partners: Bozar, Flagey, Kaaitheater, Théâtre Varia, Muntpunt, Concertgebouw Brugge and DE SINGEL. Thanks to our private partners KPMG, Proximus, Brewery Omer Vander Ghinste, Belfius, Interparking and the players of Belgium’s National Lottery. We are grateful for the support of the Flemish Community and the Brussels Capital Region. And finally, thanks to Klara and VRT: there would be no broadcast festival without their valued collaboration.

Joost Fonteyne

Intendant Klarafestival

Schumann - Elgar

Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 in B flat Major, Op. 38, “Spring” 

Composing symphonies was no simple task for the composers who developed themselves artistically in the 1830s. Indeed, the nine symphonies that Ludwig van Beethoven had written in the three previous decades were regarded as the pinnacle of orchestral music. The consequence was that each new work was first compared in depth with Beethoven’s nine symphonies, before being judged on its own merits. Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was equally an admirer of Beethoven, and he too experienced Beethoven’s symphonies more as a burdensome shadow from the past than as a possible source of inspiration.

In 1833 at the age of 23, Schumann was already working on a symphony for the first time, of which he completed at least three movements. Schumann undoubtedly learnt a great deal from this, not only about composing for orchestra, but also about the genre. Years later, on 14 April 1839, he wrote to his composition tutor Heinrich Dorn: “Sometimes I want to smash my piano, because it is too narrow for my musical ideas. It is true that as of yet I have little experience in writing for orchestra, but I hope to be able to acquire this soon.” Yet it would not be until 1841 that Schumann made a second attempt at writing a symphony. Between 23 and 26 January, in an uninterrupted wave of inspiration, Schumann sketched his Symphony No. 1: an entire symphony in four days and nights! The premiere was soon staged, on 31 March, performed by the best orchestra of this era, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and conducted by Schumann’s friend Mendelssohn. The work was very positively received. 

In his symphonies, Schumann leans more towards the symphonic lyricism of Schubert than towards the drama of Beethoven. The Symphony No. 1 does have more allusions to Schubert, such as the opening motif in the horns and the trumpets, which harks back to the horn call with which Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 begins. The second movement, Larghetto, is a freely conceived series of variations on a long, drawn-out melody with a modest, almost religious character. The robust Scherzo is an extended five-piece construction, with two restless trios. The finale opens with a powerful fanfare and then takes on the character of a cheerful dance with a series of folkish melodies. As the movement progresses, the rhythm of the opening bars comes more and more to the fore, after which the work runs towards its end in an explosion of brass fanfares.

Edward Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B Minor, Op. 61 

If you want to know who I regard as the greatest living composer, I say without hesitation Elgar. [...] I place him on an equal footing with my idols, Beethoven and Brahms. [...] I wish Elgar would write something for the violin.  – Fritz Kreisler in The Hereford Times, 7 October 1905

Around the turn of the century, successes such as the Enigma Variations (1899) and The Dream of Gerontius (1900) ensured that Edward Elgar was hailed as Great Britain’s most important composer. One of his admirers was the violin virtuoso Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), who two years after his acclaimed London debut in 1902 received the gold medal from the Philharmonic Society. Soon afterwards, Kreisler asked his idol to write a work for him. As a response, Elgar composed his Violin Concerto, which premiered in 1909 with Kreisler as a soloist. Apart from the dedication to Kreisler, the score bears a mysterious, Spanish inscription: "Aqui esta encerrada el alma de....." ("Herein lies the soul of...."), a quote from the 18th-century novel Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage. Although various people from Elgar’s entourage have been suggested as its source of inspiration, the quote probably alludes to Alice Stuart-Wortley, a dear friend of Elgar who he affectionately addressed as “Windflower”.

The work is rooted in the Romantic tradition of the concerto as we encounter it in the music of Brahms, with an orchestral presentation of the musical material at the beginning and a comprehensive demonstration of the technical ability of the soloist – in the case of the violinist, think dexterous passages full of double stops, scale figures, tremolos and arpeggios. But even more challenging than the virtuosity is the musicality and rhetoric that the composer demands here. The imaginative and poetic beauty of the first movement – which includes the theme that Elgar named “Windflower” – and the melancholic, intimate second movement demand an exceptional musical versatility from the violinist. Even when in the third movement the cadenza begins (the perfect passage for the soloist to showcase their talent), this cannot be reduced to a showpiece. On the contrary, it is the composition’s emotional and structural focus point. Because the music simultaneously rushes on to the end and looks back on the beauty that preceded it, the finale fluctuates between exuberant passion and introverted lyricism, between future and past.

Bozar Archives / Lalina Goddard

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla

Lithuanian conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla came to international fame when she won the prestigious Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award in 2012. A Dudamel Fellowship at the Los Angeles Philharmonic was followed by numerous invitations of orchestras and operas worldwide. From 2014-16 she was Assistant Conductor and from 2016-17 Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She became Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2016. In 2022-2023, she assumes the position of principal guest conductor of the CBSO for one season. 

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Under the baton of its Music Director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is the flagship of musical life in Birmingham and the West Midlands, and one of the world’s great orchestras. The orchestra played its very first symphonic concert in 1920 conducted by Sir Edward Elgar. Under principal conductors including Adrian Boult, George Weldon, Andrzej Panufnik, Louis Frémaux and Simon Rattle, the CBSO became internationally famous – and showed how the arts can help give a new sense of direction to a whole city.

Vilde Frang

Vilde Frang’s profound musicianship and exceptional lyricism has elevated her as one of the leading and most individual violinists of her generation. In 2012 she was unanimously awarded the Credit Suisse Young Artists Award. In 2016 Vilde made her acclaimed debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker under Sir Simon Rattle and at Baden Baden Easter Festival with Ivan Fischer. Highlights of recent seasons include engagements with London Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris, among others.

CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

CONDUCTOR

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla

FIRST VIOLINS

Nathaniel Anderson-Frank

Jonathan Martindale

Philip Brett

Peter Liang

Jane Wright

Stephen Proctor

Kirsty Lovie

Mark Robinson

Colette Overdijk

Stefano Mengoli

Catherine Chambers

Katharine Gittings

Wendy Quirk

Robert Bilson

Amanda Woods 

Victoria Gill

SECOND VIOLINS

Lowri Porter 

Moritz Pfister

Catherine Arlidge

Amy Jones

Cassi Hamilton

Bryony Morrison

Gabriel Dyker

Bethan Allmand 

Georgia Hannant

Lara Sullivan

Agnieszka Gesler

Adam Hill

Henry Salmon

Barbara Zdziarska

VIOLAS

Adam Romer

Steven Burnard

David BaMaung

Michael Jenkinson

Catherine Bower

Sarah Malcolm

Amy Thomas

Mabon Rhyd 

Jessica Tickle

Helen Roberts

Joe Ichinose

Henrietta Ridgeon

CELLOS

Eduardo Vassallo

Charles-Antoine Archambault

Arthur Boutillier

David Powell

Miguel Fernandes

Helen Edgar

Catherine Ardagh-Walter

Sarah Berger

Joss Brookes

Abigail Hyde-Smith

DOUBLE BASSES

Anthony Alcock

Julian Atkinson

Jeremy Watt

Julian Walters

Aisling Reilly

Mark Goodchild

David Burndrett

Lowri Morgan

FLUTES

Marie-Christine Zupancic

Veronika Klirova

OBOES

Alex Hilton 

Emmet Byrne

CLARINETS

Oliver Janes

Joanna Patton

BASSOONS

Nikolaj Henriques

Benjamin Hudson

CONTRABASSOON

Margaret Cookhorn

HORNS

Christopher Gough

Flora Bain

Mark Phillips

Jeremy Bushell

Olivia Gandee

TRUMPETS

Jason Lewis

Robert Johnston

Jonathan Quirk

TROMBONES

Richard Watkin

Anthony Howe

BASS TROMBONE

David Vines

TUBA

Adrian Miotti

TIMPANI

Matthew Hardy

PERCUSSION

Adrian Spillett