With the 2026/27 season, Kazuki Yamada takes up the position of chief conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Joining him at the Elbphilharmonie is Canadian cello star Jean-Guihen Queyras for a programme of striking contrasts: as delicate and luminous as Henri Dutilleux’s Cello Concerto unfolds, so wild and unbridled is the music of Hector Berlioz’s celebrated »Symphonie fantastique«.
In keeping with the Hamburg International Music Festival theme »Sex, Drugs & Rock ’n’ Roll«, Berlioz follows a young artist in love from the bliss of first infatuation through a dazzling ball and into an opium-induced delirium, culminating in a hellish ride to the Last Judgement. The composer drew inspiration from his own infatuation with the actress Harriet Smithson – who was so captivated by the music that she wanted to meet Berlioz, and the two eventually married.
Dutilleux, too, found poetic inspiration for his Cello Concerto. »Tout un monde lointain…« takes its cue from five poems from Charles Baudelaire’s cycle »Les Fleurs du mal« (The Flowers of Evil). With their exploration of the darker, melancholic and at times erotic sides of human nature, the poems caused a scandal when they were published in the mid-19th century, yet quickly secured their place as classics of world literature.
PERFORMERS
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin orchestra
Jean-Guihen Queyras violoncello
Kazuki Yamada conductor
PROGRAM
Unsuk Chin
subito con forza
Henri Dutilleux
Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra »Tout un monde lointain...«
- Interval -
Hector Berlioz
Symphonie fantastique
