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Windfuhr's workshop concerts with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra

The program includes the world premiere of Matti Pakkanen's work "Umbra" and Gustav Mahler's wonderful 4th Symphony. The Hamburg Symphony Orchestra will perform under the direction of Ulrich Windfuhr. Soprano Michaela Kaune will be the soloist in her inaugural concert as a new HfMT professor.

Date and location: Friday, July 13, 2018, Forum of the HfMT.
The concert starts at 7.30 pm, an introduction to the works will take place at 6.45 pm.
Admission: 10 euros (reduced 5 euros)

About the works:
Pakkanen: Umbra
The central idea of "Umbra" is transition from simplicity to complexity, from clarity to blurriness. The piece begins with very soft harmonics in the strings. At first, only the overtones of D sound. Gradually - opening up the circle of fifths from D in both directions - more and more rows of overtones are added until - like rays in each direction - they encompass the whole circle. The superimposition of more and more overtone rows causes a gradual shading of the texture until it becomes completely opaque; hence the name "Umbra" (sunspot). The second half of the piece consists of a 46-voice micropolyphonic canon constructed in a serial manner, which slowly thins out until only one overtone row on D remains at the end. In order to achieve the greatest possible fineness of texture and the densest possible micropolyphony, all the strings are treated as soloists.

Matti Pakkanen was born in 1977 in Pori, Finland. He received his first piano lessons at the age of six, and a year later entered music school at the Palmgren Conservatory, majoring in cello. He studied singing in Lahti, Finland 1998-2001 and in Järna, Sweden 2001-2003. From 2003-2007 he studied vocal pedagogy and choral conducting at the Musikseminar Hamburg. There he also attended courses in microtonal music with Heiner Ruland. Since 2011, he has been studying composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama with Prof. Manfred Stahnke. Microtonality is usually clearly present in his music, and, in collaboration with the company "Marimba" in Bielefeld, he has also developed various percussion instruments with tunings that deviate from the usual ones. His own research in the field of microtonality was published in an article he wrote for the book "1001 Mikrotöne" (Von Bockel
Verlag) was published. He was a fellow of the Oscar and Vera Ritter Foundation 2014-2017. In summer 2014 he was "Composer in Residence" in Cultural Center M.K.Sarbievius in Kražiai, Lithuania. His music has been performed in many concert halls around the world, such as Sage Gateshead in the UK or Shanghai Symphony Hall.

Mahler: Symphony No. 4
Gustav Mahler composed the 4th Symphony in the summer months of 1899 and 1900. Mahler completed the fair copy on January 5, 1901. The composition process only comprised three movements, as the finale had already been decided. For this, Mahler used the song "Das himmlische Leben" from the songs he had set to music in Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The song had already been written in 1892, while he was working on the 2nd Symphony. Mahler originally planned to conceive his 4th Symphony as a symphonic humoresque. Vocal elements were to be integrated much more generously than was ultimately the case. Three of the planned six movements were to consist of Wunderhorn songs, as the earliest movement plan from 1896 indicates. However, the actual realization only has the key of G major and the final movement in common with this plan.
The premiere of the symphony took place in Munich on November 25, 1901 with the Kaim Orchestra and the soprano Margarete Michalik under the direction of Gustav Mahler. The work was a flop and caused consternation among the audience. The less grandiose and pompous style compared to the two previous Wunderhorn symphonies disappointed the audience. The departure from Romantic pathos also caused confusion. Music critic Theodor Kroyer, for example, accused Mahler of the symphony containing "no original feeling". Everything was "technique, calculation and inner mendacity, a sickly, flavored over-music." The Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung spoke of a "not very refreshing impression". Only a few critics recognized the progressive value of the new work. Mahler's friend Ernst Otto Nodnagel praised the premiere as the "first real musical event of the 20th century". Theodor W. Adorno later commented: "A masterpiece like the Fourth Symphony is an as-if from the first to the last note". Today, Mahler's 4th Symphony is one of the composer's most popular works. Mahler himself described the symphony as one of his best works.
About the performers
Michaela Kaune studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg and has won prizes at the Belvedere Competition in Vienna and the German National Singing Competition, among others.
The artist has been a guest at the most important international opera houses for many years. At the end of the 2015/2016 season, she took on a complete series of Rosenkavalier at the Opéra de Paris under Philippe Jordan with great success, in which she was seen in one of her most important roles, the Marschallin.
Michaela Kaune is closely associated with the Deutsche Oper Berlin and was appointed Berlin Kammersängerin in 2011. Her regular collaboration with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Semperoper in Dresden as well as guest engagements at the Opéra National de Paris, the Vienna State Opera, the New National Theatre in Tokyo, the Nederlandse Opera and La Monnaie in Brussels are also particularly noteworthy, at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Vlaamse Opera Antwerpen as well as at the Salzburg Festival, the Bayreuth Festival, the Ravinia Festival, the Budapest Festival, the Maggio Musicale, Florence, the Festival de Radio France, the Musikfest Berlin, Carnegie Hall New York and the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo. In 2011, the artist was appointed Berlin Kammersängerin.
In the winter semester of 2013/14, Ulrich Windfuhr took over the professorship for conducting at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg. In addition to training young conductors, one focus of his work is directing the university orchestra. Ulrich Windfuhr was born in Heidelberg in 1960. He studied piano, conducting and chamber music in Cologne from 1978 to 1984. He then continued his studies with Franco Ferrara in Siena, Florence and Rome. As a DAAD scholarship holder in Vienna, he studied with Otmar Suitner and Karl Österreicher and attended conducting courses with Gennadi Roshdestvensky, Carlo Maria Giulini and Leonard Bernstein. In 1985 Ulrich Windfuhr was a prize-winner at the Vittorio Gui International Conducting Competition and in 1986 at the Janos Ferencsic International Conducting Competition in Budapest. After positions as Kapellmeister in Dortmund, Augsburg, Nuremberg with Christian Thielemann and Hanover, he was first acting General Music Director in Karlsruhe, then GMD in Kiel. From 2006 to 2012, permanent guest conductor at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Professor of conducting at the HMT Leipzig since 2007. Juror at the German Conducting Competition, juror and course leader at the German Conductors' Forum.