Thomas Guggeis debuts with “Also sprach Zarathustra”
Music meets literature: Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra, loosely based on Friedrich Nietzsche’s book of the same name, describes the victory of light over darkness. Maurice Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé tells a love story from antiquity in shimmering sounds, while Henri Dutilleux’s dreamlike cello concerto Tout un monde lointain… was inspired by Baudelaire’s volume of poetry The Flowers of Evil. Conductor Thomas Guggeis and cellist Maximilian Hornung make their debuts with the Philharmoniker.
Two sunrises enclose a mysterious night piece in this programme with which Thomas Guggeis – currently general music director in Frankfurt – makes his debut conducting the Berliner Philharmoniker. His name is well known in the German capital: in 2018, the former assistant to Daniel Barenboim stepped in at short notice to conduct the premiere of Strauss’s Salome at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and was subsequently appointed Staatskapellmeister of the opera house. Music by Strauss now also opens Guggeis’s debut programme with the Philharmoniker: with Also sprach Zarathustra he presents what is probably the most famous sunrise in music history – not least thanks to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
This majestic radiance is juxtaposed with Henri Dutilleux’s poetic cello concerto Tout un monde lointain.... Composed around 1970 for Mstislav Rostropovich, Dutilleux makes it possible to experience the “distant” scenes evoked by Baudelaire in his poems – sometimes dreamlike and remote (lontanissimo), sometimes in self-forgetful ecstasy. Maximilian Hornung, who began his career as principal cellist of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and now holds a professorship, is one of the leading cellists of his generation.
From the twilight world of poetry, Thomas Guggeis leads us back into the gleaming light: Maurice Ravel, the magician of sound, created a sunrise (Lever du jour) at the beginning of the suite from his ballet Daphnis et Chloé, which – accompanied by melodious birdsong – shimmers with all the colours of the prism. An impressive showpiece for all the instrumental sections of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and a cornucopia of expressive possibilities for the young conductor.
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