Matthias Pintscher leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in this week’s online concert, which features the Netherlands premiere of his Songs from Solomon’s Garden – with baritone Georg Nigl as soloist. Also on the programme is Ravel’s enchanting ballet suite Ma mère l’oye (Mother Goose).
Maestro Pintscher is Music Director of the Ensemble Contemporain, is the current Creative Artist at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra – collaborating closely with Music Director Louis Langrée – and is now in his seventh and final year as Artist in Association with the BCC Scottish Symphony. Previously, he has served as Music Director to the 74th Ojai Festival in 2020, as Season Creative Chair for the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, was Artist-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Principal Conductor of the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, and has worked with the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic.
Equally well known as a composer, Matthias Pintscher frequently writes works which are commissioned and performed by major international orchestras. Songs from Solomon’s Garden – performed in this concert for the first time by the Concertgebouw Orchestra – was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, led at the time by Alan Gilbert, and written for baritone. As the New York Philharmonic’s then Artist-in-Residence, American baritone Thomas Hampson was the soloist in the premiere on 16th April, 2010.
Georg Nigl, the guest artist in this online performance by the Concertgebouw, has performed at many of the world’s most important opera houses, including the Bolshoi Theater Moscow, the Staatsoper Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, the Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam, and the Théatre de La Monnaie in Brussels, as well as at festivals such as the Salzburger Festspiele, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, the Ruhrtriennale and the Wiener Festwochen.
His chamber music repertoire covers a wide range of eras – from baroque to Viennese classicism, to contemporary music – and operatic roles include Papageno in Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, the title role in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, in the world premiere of Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, the title role in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at the Hamburgische Staatsoper as well as Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte at the Staatsoper Stuttgart. He won acclaim for his performance in the title role of Rihm’s one-act chamber opera Jakob Lenz, and for his interpretation of Pilate in Peter Sellars’ staging of the St John Passion under Sir Simon Rattle with the Berlin Philharmonic, and on tour with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
The programme ends with Ravel’s charming suite Ma mère l’oye. Based on the Mother Goose Tales, this set of miniatures was written in 1908 as a piano duet for the two children of good friends of the composer. Each movement of this superbly orchestrated suite tells a different fairy tale – the Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, Petit Poucet (Tom Thumb), Laideronnette Empress of the Pagodas, Beauty and the Beast, and The Magic Garden.
Matthias Pintscher leads the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – guest artist Georg Nigl – in an online performance on Friday, 29th January, at 8.00 pm CET. The link for this free-to-view concert can be found on the Concertgebouw Orchestra website.
Information sourced from:
Concertgebouw Orchestra programme notes