KENT NAGANO

Kent Nagano is considered one of the outstanding conductors for both operatic and orchestral repertoire. He has been General Music Director of the Hamburg State Opera and Chief Conductor of the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg since September 2015. In addition, he is very committed as Artistic Director of the Wagner Readings with Concerto Köln and the Dresden Festival Orchestra, and as patron of the Herrenchiemsee Festival. In 2006 he was appointed Honorary Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, in 2019 of Concerto Köln and in 2021 of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.

As a much sought-after guest conductor, Kent Nagano has worked with the world’s leading international orchestras, including the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique Radio France, the Orchestre de l’Opéra national in Paris, the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Wiener Symphoniker.      Special projects were the productions of Wagner’s Das Rheingold with Concerto Köln and the Bernstein opera A quiet place at the Paris Opera.
His operatic work has included Dusapin‘s Il viaggio, dante at the Festival d‘Aix-en-Provence, Hindemith’s Cardillac and Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at the Opéra National de Paris and Henze’s The Bassarids and the premiere of Saariaho’s L’amour de loin at the Salzburg Festival. Other world premieres he has conducted include Bernstein’s A White House Cantata and the operas Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin, Three Sisters by Peter Eötvös and The Death of Klinghoffer and El Niño by John Adams.

Continuing the “Wagner Readings” initiated in 2018 by Kent Nagano, Concerto Köln and the Kunststiftung NRW, as well as the performance of “Rheingold” in Cologne and Amsterdam, a relaunch of the project together with the Dresden Festival Orchestra will take place as part of the Dresden Music Festival, starting with “Rheingold” in 2023. The “Ring Tetralogy” in historical performance practice will be comprehensively developed in this collaboration and continued under the artistic direction of Jan Vogler and Kent Nagano, embedded in a comprehensive Wagner program, including a new Wagner Academy in Dresden.

Kent Nagano’s past years in Hamburg include opera productions such as Les Troyens, Lulu, the world premiere of Stilles Meer and German premiere of Lessons in Love and Violence, the “Philharmonische Akademie” at St. Michaelis, open-air concerts at the Rathausmarkt and the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s work Waves for organ and orchestra at the Elbphilharmonie. Orchestral tours with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg in the past years have taken Kent Nagano to Japan, Spain and South America.

A highlight of Kent Nagano’s collaboration with the OSM as Music Director from 2006 to 2020 included the inauguration of the orchestra’s new concert hall La Maison Symphonique in September 2011, performances of the complete cycles of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, concert versions of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde and Das Rheingold, Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bücher, and Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise. Tours have taken Nagano and the orchestra to Canada including the Northern Territories, Japan, South Korea, Europe (latest 2019), Latin America and the USA. At the Bayerische Staatsoper, where he was General Music Director from 2006 to 2013, Kent Nagano commissioned new operas such as Babylon by Jörg Widmann, Das Gehege by Wolfgang Rihm and Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin. Another very important period in Nagano’s career was his time as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin from 2000-2006. He performed Schönberg’s Moses und Aron with the orchestra (in collaboration with Los Angeles Opera), and took them to the Salzburg Festival to perform both Zemlinsky’s Der König Kandaules and Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten as well as to the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with Parsifal and Lohengrin in productions by Nikolaus Lehnhoff.

Nagano has worked with labels such as BIS, Decca, Sony Classical, FARAO Classics and Analekta for many years, but he has also recorded CDs with Berlin Classics, Erato, Teldec, Pentatone, Deutsche Grammophon and Harmonia Mundi. He was awarded Grammys for his recordings of Busoni’s Doktor Faust with Opéra National de Lyon, Prokofjew’s Peter and the Wolf with the Russian National Orchestra and Saariaho’s L’amour de Loin with the Deutsches Symphonieorchester Berlin. In October 2019, Kent Nagano and Mari Kodama expanded their joint recordings of Beethoven’s works for piano and orchestra with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 0 E-flat Major WoO 4, a nearly unknown youthful work by the composer, and his Rondo for Piano and Orchestra WoO 6 with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The complete edition of Beethoven’s piano concerti was released on the Berlin Classics label. To celebrate Kent Nagano’s 70th birthday in 2021, a 3-CD box set of works by Olivier Messiaen was released in October on the BR Klassik label.

In September 2021, Kent Nagano published his second book with Berlin Verlag. In “10 Lessons of my Life”. In 2015 Kent Nagano published “Erwarten Sie Wunder!” also in Berlin Verlag, a passionate appeal for the relevance of classical music in today’s world. In 2019 the book was published in English by the Canadian McGill-Queen’s University Press under the title ″Classical Music – Expect the Unexpected” and in 2015 under “Sonnez, merveilles!” in French by Éditions du Boréal.

Born in California, Nagano maintains close connections with his home state and was Music Director of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra from 1978-2009.  His first major successes came with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1984, when Messiaen appointed him assistant to conductor Seiji Ozawa for the premiere of his opera Saint François d’Assise. Nagano’s success in America led to European appointments: Music Director of Opéra National de Lyon (1988-1998) and Music Director of the Hallé Orchestra (1991-2000). Kent Nagano became the first Music Director of Los Angeles Opera in 2003 having already held the position of Principal Conductor for two years.

Concerto Köln 

Passionate musicianship and a yearning for the re-discovery of forgotten repertoire are signature features of Concerto Köln. Since 1985, the orchestra with highly individual sound, is one of the reading ensembles for Historically Informed Performance. With one foot firmly rooted in Köln’s musical life and as a regular guest at important musical venues worldwide, Concerto Köln stands for excellence in the interpretation of historical music up to Romanticism. For many years, the musicians have been proving in their project choices, that artistic sophistication and popular success are not mutually exclusive.

The open repertoire is a mark of Concerto Köln since its founding days. Classical pieces by Gluck, Mozart and others have been required on their program since the beginnings of the self-administered orchestra. During the work on Mozart’s “Idomeneo” with Kent Nagano in 2016, the idea of a shared historically informed re-discovery of Romantic music arose.

Since 2018, the ensemble and its honorary conductor Kent Nagano are investigating the musical work of Richard Wagner in cooperation with scientists and researchers from different fields in the innovative project “Wagner-Lesarten”. With financial support by Kunststiftung NRW, the artistic and scientific undertaking explored historically informed approaches to a Romantic repertoire. The project closed in 2021 with an illustrious concert performance at Kölner Philharmonie and Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

Since 2022, the cooperation with the Dresden Festival Orchestra creates the ideal requirements to interpret Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in a newly inspired historical way. Both the connecting top orchestras are known and renowned for their continuous search for newly imagined interpretations of works in the zeitgeist of their times of creation.

Together and in their individual projects, Concerto Köln and the Dresden Festival Orchestra

are questioning established habits in music making and are setting new standards for the

future with unusual hearing impressions.

DRESDEN FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA

A masterful combination of passionate, joyful musicmaking and knowledgeable interpretations – that is the Dresden Festival Orchestra. Founded in 2012 by the Dresden Music Festival, the ensemble for historically informed performance practice dedicates itself to the fascinating search for a work’s original sound.

With great joy of discovery, precision and a keen sense for authentic interpretations, the ensemble explores the original sound of a work given by a composer and has found its main repertoire in the romantic era.

The orchestra’s fresh and authentic approach results from its unique international cast, with members who are at home in such renowned early music ensembles as the Academy of Ancient Music, the Orchestra of the Eighteenths Century, the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the Concentus Musicus Wien, Il Giardino Armonico, Le Cercle de l’Harmonie, Concerto Köln, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin or the English Baroque Soloists.  Presenting lively, gripping performances on original instruments of the time a given work was first performed and in keeping with historical knowledge, the musicians breathe new life into the sound worlds of the past centuries.

Already in the year of its celebrated premier, the Dresden Festival Orchestra enthralled both audience and critics. In 2015 it was nominated for the »International Opera Award«, offering a brilliant rediscovery of Richard Strauss’ opera »Feuersnot« (a coproduction with the Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden).

Since 2012 Ivor Bolton has been the orchestra’s chief conductor. Guest conductors include Hans Christoph Rademann, Johannes Klumpp, Josep Caballé Domenech, Constantinos Carydis and David Robertson. One of the recent highlights was the performance of the complete symphonies by Schumann under the direction of Daniele Gatti in May 2021. The orchestra has shared the stage with high-carat soloists such as Giuliano Carmignola, Isabelle Faust, Bejun Mehta, Waltraud Meier, Valer Sabadus, Nicola Benedetti, Thomas Zehetmair, Simone Kermes, René Pape and Martin Helmchen.

In addition to performances at the Dresden Music Festival, concerts led the orchestra to the Philharmonic in Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Philharmonie in Essen and to the the  Music Festival in Bogotá.

In October 2016, the first recording was released, featuring Schumann’s Second Symphony and his Cello Concerto, with Jan Vogler as soloist.

In 2023, an extensive scientific-artist project is dedicated to the historically informed approach and performance of Richard Wagner’s »The Ring of the Nibelung«. Under the artistic direction of Kent Nagano, the Dresden Festival Orchestra and Concerto Köln will perform the entire »Ring« from the perspective of historically informed performance practice. With the premiere of »Das Rheingold «on June 14, 2023, in Dresden the first part of this project will be presented.

JAN VOGLER

Jan Vogler’s illustrious career has led him to collaborate with renowned conductors and orchestras of international renown, around the world, such as the New York Philharmonic, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His great ability has allowed him to explore the sonic boundaries of the cello and to establish an intense dialogue with contemporary composers and artists. These collaborations include regular world premieres, such as works by Tigran Mansurian (with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Cologne, conducted by Semyon Bychkov), John Harbison (with Mira Wang and the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Udo Zimmermann (Orchestra Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio), Wolfgang Rihm (Double Concerto with Mira Wang), Jörg Widman (Cello Concerto “Dunkle Saiten”, dedicated to Jan Vogler himself) and Nico Muhly, Sven Helbig and Zhou-Long (“Drei Kontinente – Konzert für Cello und Orchester”, composed for Jan Vogler).

Some of the highlights of Jan Vogler’s career as a soloist are concerts with the New York Philharmonic – both in New York and in Dresden, under the direction of Lorin Maazel, on the occasion of the reopening of the newly reconstructed Dresdner Frauenkirche in 2005 –, with the Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh and Montréal Symphony Orchestras, with the Sächsische Staatskapelle of Dresden, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with the Orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, with the Wiener Symphoniker, with the Münchner Philharmoniker and with the orchestra The Knights. Jan Vogler also collaborates with conductors of the caliber of Andris Nelsons, Fabio Luisi, Sir Antonio Pappano, Valery Gergiev, Thomas Hengelbrock, Manfred Honeck and Kent Nagano.

The “Wagner Lesarten” project, started in 2018 by Kent Nagano, in collaboration with the Concerto Köln and the NRW (Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen) Art Foundation, will be relaunched together with the Dresden Festspielorchester as part of the Dresden Musikfestspiele, starting with the performance of the “Rheingold” in 2023. Thanks to this collaboration, the “Tetralogy of the Ring” will be performed in its entirety from the perspective of historically informed performance; the project will continue under the artistic direction of Jan Vogler and Kent Nagano, within a program dedicated entirely to Wagner, which also includes a new “Wagner Academy” in Dresden.

Since 2003 Jan Vogler has been recording for the Sony Classical label since 2003 and, in the course of this cooperation, around 20 CDs have been released so far. The most recent recordings were “The Dvorak Album”, in July 2022, with musicians from the Moritzburg Festival, and “Pop Songs”, in May 2022, in which Jan Vogler explores the history of pop song in past centuries, with Omer Meir Wellber and the BBC Philharmonic.

Jan Vogler has been Superintendent of the renowned Dresden Musikfestspiele since October 2008 and Artistic Director of the Moritzburg Festival since 2001. In 2017 the Moritzburg Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary, together with the achievement of being one of the most established chamber music festivals internationally.

Jan Vogler plays Stradivari cello ‘Ex Castelbarco/Fau’ 1707.

The Rhinegold

(Prologue of The Ring of the Nibelung)

Scene 1
At the bottom of the Rhine, the three Rhinemaidens, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Floßhilde, play together. Alberich, a Nibelung dwarf, appears from a deep chasm and tries to woo them. The maidens mock his advances, and he grows angry – he chases them, but they elude, tease and humiliate him. A sudden ray of sunshine pierces the depths, to reveal the Rhinegold. The maidens rejoice in the gold’s gleam. Alberich asks what it is. They explain that the gold, which their father has ordered them to guard, can be made into a magic ring which gives power to rule the world, if its bearer first renounces love. The maidens think they have nothing to fear from the lustful dwarf, but Alberich, embittered by their mockery, curses love, seizes the gold and returns to his chasm, leaving them screaming in dismay.

Scene 2
Wotan, ruler of the gods, is asleep on a mountaintop, with a magnificent castle behind him. His wife, Fricka, wakes Wotan, who salutes their new home. Fricka reminds him of his promise to the giants Fasolt and Fafner, who built the castle, that he would give them Fricka’s sister Freia, the goddess of youth and beauty, as payment. Fricka is worried for her sister, but Wotan trusts that Loge, the cunning demigod of fire, will find an alternative payment.
Freia enters in a panic, followed by Fasolt and Fafner. Fasolt demands that Freia be given up. He points out that Wotan’s authority is sustained by the treaties carved into his spear, including his contract with the giants, which Wotan therefore cannot violate. Donner, god of thunder, and Froh, god of sunshine, arrive to defend Freia, but Wotan cannot permit the use of force to break the agreement. Hoping that Loge will arrive with the alternative payment he has promised, Wotan tries to stall.
When Loge arrives, his initial report is discouraging nothing is more valuable to men than love, so there is apparently no possible alternative payment besides Freia. Loge was able to find only one instance where someone willingly gave up love for something else: Alberich the Nibelung has renounced love, stolen the Rhine gold, and made a powerful magic ring out of it. A discussion of the ring and its powers ensues, and everyone finds good reasons for wanting to own it. Fafner makes a counteroffer: the giants will accept the Nibelung’s treasure in payment, instead of Freia. When Wotan tries to haggle, the giants depart, taking Freia with them as hostage and threatening to keep her forever unless the gods ransom her by obtaining and giving them the Nibelung’s gold by the end of the day.
Freia’s golden apples had kept the gods eternally young, but in her absence, they begin to age and weaken. In order to redeem Freia, Wotan resolves to travel with Loge to Alberich’s subterranean kingdom to obtain the gold.

Scene 3
In Nibelheim, Alberich has enslaved the rest of the Nibelung dwarves with the power of the ring. He has forced his brother Mime, a skillful smith, to create a magic helmet, the Tarnhelm. Alberich demonstrates the Tarnhelm’s power by making himself invisible, the better to torment his subjects.
Wotan and Loge arrive and happen upon Mime, who tells them of the dwarves’ misery under Alberich’s rule. Alberich returns, driving his slaves to pile up a huge mound of gold. He boasts to the visitors about his plans to conquer the world using the power of the ring. Loge asks how he can protect himself against a thief while he sleeps. Alberich replies the Tarnhelm will hide him, by allowing him to turn invisible or change his form. Loge expresses doubt and requests a demonstration. Alberich complies by transforming himself into a giant snake; Loge acts suitably impressed, and then asks whether Alberich can also reduce his size, which would be very useful for hiding. Alberich transforms himself into a toad. Wotan and Loge seize him, tie his hands, and drag him up to the surface.

Scene 4
Back on the mountaintop, Wotan and Loge force Alberich to exchange his wealth for his freedom. He summons the Nibelungen, who bring up the hoard of gold. He then asks for the return of the Tarnhelm, but Loge says that it is part of his ransom. Alberich still hopes he can keep the ring, but Wotan demands it, and when Alberich refuses, Wotan tears it from Alberich’s hand and puts it on his own finger. Crushed by his loss, Alberich lays a curse on the ring: until it returns to him, it will inspire restless jealousy in those who own it, and murderous envy in those who do not, thus condemning all the possessors of the ring.
The gods reconvene. Fasolt and Fafner return with Freia. Fasolt, reluctant to release her, insists that the gold be piled high enough to hide her from view. Wotan is forced to relinquish the Tarnhelm, to help cover Freia completely. However, Fasolt spots a remaining crack in the gold, through which one of Freia’s eyes can be seen. Loge says that there is no more gold, but Fafner, who has noticed the ring on Wotan’s finger, demands that Wotan add it to the pile, to block the crack. Loge protests that the ring belongs to the Rheinmaidens, and Wotan angrily declares that he intends to keep it for his own. As the giants seize Freia and start to leave, Erda, the earth goddess, appears and warns Wotan of impending doom, urging him to give up the cursed ring. Troubled, Wotan calls the giants back and surrenders the ring. The giants release Freia and begin dividing the treasure, but they quarrel over the ring itself. Fafner clubs Fasolt to death. Wotan, horrified, realizes that Alberich’s curse has terrible power.
Donner summons a thunderstorm to clear the air, after which Froh creates a rainbow bridge that stretches to the gate of the castle. Wotan leads the gods across the bridge to the castle, which he names Valhalla. Loge does not follow; he says in an aside that he is tempted to destroy the complacent gods by fire – he will think it over. Far below, the Rhinemaidens mourn the loss of their gold and condemn the gods as false and cowardly.