BRUCKNER 9

Esther Wu (1996) 

One Minute Symphony: Fluxing Mirror (2020) 

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) 

Memnon, D 541 (1817, orchestration: Johannes Brahms) 

Otto Ketting (1935-2012) 

Ithaka Symphony (world premiere) (composition: Elmer Schönberger) 

• The empty darkness frightens me 

• Wild fantasies 

• As you set out for Ithaka 

Break 

Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) 

Symphony No. 9 in d (1887-96; Nowak edition) 

• Feierlich: Misterioso 

• Scherzo: Bewegt, lebhaft - Trio: Schnell 

• Adagio: Langsam, feierlich 

End of concert approximately 10:15 p.m. 

Antony Hermus conductor 

Studiedpiano and orchestral conducting at the Tilburg Conservatory of Music. 

Current position Permanent guest conductor North Netherlands Orchestra, artistic advisor National Youth Orchestra and permanent guest conductor Opera North (Leeds). From fall 2022 chief conductor Belgian National Orchestra. 

HighlightsWas appointed Generalmusikdirektor of the German city of Hagen at the age of 29. Was artistic director of the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau and chief conductor of the Anhaltische Philharmonie (2009-2015), where he conducted two cycles of Wagner's "Ring" among others and was appointed honorary conductor. Conducted the main Dutch orchestras but also Philharmonia Orchestra London, BBC Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and several other English, German and French orchestras. Also conducted many opera productions, including in Berlin, Stuttgart, Gothenburg and Paris.  

Martijn Cornet baritone 

Studied Conservatory of Amsterdam. Member of the Opera Studio Nederland. 

Highlights Was associated with the Aalto-Musiktheater in Essen where he sang roles in Le Nozze di Fiagro, Ariadne auf Naxos, Carmen, La bohème and Rusalka, among others. Sang with various opera companies such as the Early Opera Company in London, Opéra National de Lorraine and De Nationale Opera in world premieres by Peter-Jan Wagemans and Louis Andriessen, among others. Worked with the Residentie Orkest, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra with conductors such as Marc Minkowski, Jan Willem de Vriend, Reinbert de Leeuw and Richard Egarr. 

Residentie Orkest The Hague 

Founded The Hague, 1904 

Current chief conductor Anja Bihlmaier 

Permanent guest conductors Richard Egarr and Jun Märkl 

Chief conductors Henri Viotta, Peter van Anrooy, Frits Schuurman, Willem van Otterloo, Jean Martinon, Ferdinand Leitner, Hans Vonk, Evgenii Svetlanov, Jaap van Zweden, Neeme Järvi, Nicholas Collon. 

To be seen at Amare, Paard, The National Opera, Royal Concertgebouw, De Doelen, TivoliVredenburg among others . 

Education Annual outreach to over 40,000 schoolchildren, adults and amateur musicians in educational projects. Part of this is The Residents, through which the orchestra brings hundreds of children from districts in The Hague into contact with classical music. 

Schubert, Ketting and Bruckner 

The Residentie Orkest and new music traditionally belong together. Playing new works by Dutch composers is always a great adventure for both our musicians and our audience. Also in our new Concert Hall in Amare! 

Tonight the orchestra will play the world premiere of the Ithaka Symphony, which was composed based on music by Otto Ketting (1935-2012) by composer, writer and biographer Elmer Schönberger. As a three-year-old boy in 1938, Otto Ketting was taken by his father, the composer Piet Ketting, to a concert where the Residentie Orkest , conducted by Willem van Otterloo, performed Hindemith's Mathis der Maler. Sixteen years later, after completing his trumpet studies at Royal Conservatoire The Hague, he himself was associated with the Residentie Orkest (between 1954-1961). 

Otto Ketting is among the most successful composers in the Netherlands. Already in 1957 he won the Gaudeamus Prize with his Passacaglia and repeated it in 1958 with Due Canzoni. This was followed by the Kees van Baaren Prize (in 1973) for Time Machine (which, with more than 150 performances, is one of the most frequently played Dutch orchestral works), the Matthijs Vermeulen Prize and the second prize at the Unesco Rostrum of Composers (both in 1979) for the Symphony for Saxophones and Orchestra, and in 1992 the American Barlow Prize for his Third Symphony. As a conductor, he has appeared several times at Residentie Orkest, including with his own compositions Time Machine and Super Sister. About the Ithaka Symphony, Elmer Schönberger says: "This orchestral work is based on the opera of the same name, composed on the occasion of the opening of the Muziektheater in Amsterdam in 1986. The libretto was written around a poem by the Greek poet Kaváfis. Ketting had been intending for some time to take this poem as the basis for a symphony, mindful of Mahler's Fourth Symphony. So, on the basis of the opera, I bring the music back to the original idea: a symphony with a voice singing Kaváfis' poem in the Last movement." 

"At the time of the opera's creation, I was the dramatist, so I know the work inside out. That's why I dared to rework the opera into a three-part orchestral work. I had to cut and paste, of course, and re-instrument here and there. But all the notes are Ketting's own. I concentrated on three characters: "the woman," "the macho" and "the poet," who sings his own poem. In doing so, the basic tone of the opera remained intact. The original music, and thus this symphony, is permeated with deep melancholy, of longing, of a reaching for. The thrust of Kaváfis poem is: the purpose of life is not death but life itself. Being on the road, being open to what you experience, to the people you meet." 

On February 11, 1903, seven years after Anton Bruckner's death, the first performance was given in Vienna of his Ninth Symphony. However, Bruckner was no longer able to give his Ninth a completed Last movement. On his deathbed, the sketches for the Finale lay spread out before him. Bruckner wrote his friend Göllerich, who would become his biographer, "Die neue d-moll Symphonie ist mir ins Herz gewachsen [...]. Der Tod wird mir hoffentlich die Feder nicht zu früh aus der Hand nehmen [...]!" He regarded the completion of his Ninth as a Last dedication to "dem lieben Gott. The idea was to conclude with a "Te Deum," a choral symphony in the spirit of Beethoven's Ninth but not an Ode an die Freude but a praise of God. He began composing a connecting music, which was to connect the Adagio with the 'Te Deum,' but death caught up with him. 

The first movement begins, as usual with Bruckner, with a mysterious tremolo of the string orchestra. Out of that "almost nothing," eight horns search for a keynote, for a melody, a theme that finally takes shape in a unison passage, a primal motif of natural tones extending over twenty measures. How form and spirit relate here cannot be explained. It is a symphonic process of unheard-of length, expressing all human feelings and desires, hope and doubt, fear and fate, and surrender to God's will. As this process began, so it ends: in natural tones, "the allusion to a primal musical state.  

In the Scherzo, the 70-year-old composer's hubris takes over. A motif tumbling back and forth to a pounding rhythm, curious in its simplicity and startling in its effect: it is one of Bruckner's most resounding scherzos. The Trio stands in poetic-dreamy contrast to the preceding and that which follows.  

'Abschied vom Leben' Bruckner called the impressive horn passage in the Adagio that concludes his Ninth Symphony. It is a review of his life, the contemplation of his creative work as a man and an artist. There speaks only humility, resignation and surrender from this swan song. The orchestra becomes organ, the music veils. Another unearthly song grows, a hymn, a prayer: he is 'der Welt abhanden gekommen...'. 

Memnon 

Den Tag hindurch nur einmal mag ich sprechen, 

Gewohnt zu schweigen immer und zu trauern: 

Wenn durch die nachtgebor'nen Nebelmauern 

Aurorens Purpurstrahlen liebend brechen. 

Für Menschenohren sind es Harmonien. 

Weil ich die Klage selbst melodisch künde 

Und durch der Dichtung Glut des Rauhe ründe, 

Vermuten sie in mir ein selig Blühen. 

In mir, nach dem des Todes Arme langen, 

In dessen tiefstem Herzen Schlangen wühlen; 

Genährt von meinen schmerzlichen 

Gefühlen Fast wütend durch ein ungestillt Verlangen: 

Mit dir, des Morgens Göttin, mich zu einen, 

Und weit von diesem nichtigen Getriebe, 

Aus Sphären edler Freiheit, aus Sphären reiner Liebe, 

Ein stiller, bleicher Stern herab zu scheinen. 

Text: Johann Mayrhofer 

As you set out for Ithaka 

As you set out for Ithaka 

hope your road is a long one, 

full of adventure, full of discovery 

Laestrygonians, Cyclopes angry Poseidon, don't. 

Don't be afraid of them. As long as you keep your thoughs raised high. 

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey. 

Without her you wouldn't have set out. 

She has nothing left to give you now.