Roberto González-Monjas returns to the Lucerne Festival on Thursday, 26 August. He play/directs the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and superstar pianist Yuja Wang in a powerful programme spanning from the Baroque era to the 20th century.
The Festival writes:
“Can this really be music from the Baroque era? When the Mahler Chamber Orchestra plays the Chaos section from Jean-Féry Rebel’s ballet suite Les élémens, you might almost take it for an intensified variant of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps – so radical, percussive, and dissonant is the work’s beginning. No question: in the search for the craziest piece of the summer, Rebel’s rebellious music is a very hot candidate. It far outdoes Stravinsky, who is represented here not as a young savage but as a neoclassicist, from the angle of Modernism. La passione is the nickname of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in F minor on account of its unbridled expressive rage – a score full of eccentric and provocative ideas. And then “artiste étoile” Yuja Wang gets in on the action: first she will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s incomparable F minor Concerto, which combines dance-like exuberance with contrapuntal mastery and transcendental rapture. She then will focus on late Janáček, an “old savage,” with his whimsical Capriccio for left-handed piano.”
Highly sought-after as a conductor and violinist, Roberto González-Monjas is rapidly making a mark on the international scene. A natural musical leader with strong vision and clarity, Roberto possess a unique mixture of remarkable personal charisma, an abundance of energy, enthusiasm and fierce intelligence. Recent guest conducting debuts which led to immediate re-invitations and significant future debuts include collaborations with Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Camerata Salzburg, Orchestre National de Belgique, Orchestre national d’Île de France, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orquesta Sinfonica de Castilla y Leon, Malaysian Philharmonic and Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa among many others. Roberto is Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of Dalasinfoniettan and Chief Conductor Designate of Musikkollegium Winterthur (from 2021/22). He plays a 1710 Giuseppe Guarnieri ‘filius Andreae’ violin kindly loaned to him by five Winterthur families and the Rychenberg Stiftung.
For more information, please visit lucernefestival.ch
Programme
Jean-Féry Rebel (1666–1747)
Chaos from Les éléments
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
Concerto for Piano and Orchestra in F minor, BWV 1056
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971)
Octet for wind instruments
Leoš Janáček (1854–1928)
Capriccio for piano (left hand) and wind instruments
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Symphony in F minor, Hob. I:49 La passione
Photo: Marco Borggreve
