Program
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin, Op.24, Act III: Polonaise
Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole, Op.21
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No.4 in F Minor, Op.36
Michiyoshi Inoue
Passionate about the arts from a young age, Michiyoshi Inoue began piano lessons very early and studied ballet for ten years before deciding, at the age of fifteen, to pursue a career as a conductor. On entering the renowned Toho Gakuen School of Music, he studied under the late Hideo Saito, one of the country’s most prominent music scholars and mentor to conductors such as Seiji Ozawa, Hiroshi Wakasugi and Kazuyoshi Akiyama.
Mr. Inoue’s professional career began in 1970 when he was named Associate Conductor to the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. A year later, the critical acclaim following his first prize at the Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in Milan brought him to the attention of the international music scene, and he has been a familiar face on podiums all over the world ever since.
From 1977 to 1982 Mr. Inoue was Principal Guest Conductor at the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, leading them to participate in the 1980 Hong Kong Music Festival. A year after leaving New Zealand, he was appointed Music Director of Tokyo’s New Japan Philharmonic, where he remained until 1988. It was during these years that he made a name for himself within the genre of opera, his many successful productions included the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy as well as Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” and Mascagni’s “Iris”. In 1986, he was given the honor of conducting the inaugural concert at Suntory Hall. Mr. Inoue was the Music Director of the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra between 1990 and the spring of 1998, leading them in May 1997 on a highly successful tour of Europe including much acclaimed performances at the Prague Spring Festival.
Invited to conduct the most prestigious orchestras all over the world, Mr. Inoue has collaborated in Germany with the orchestras of Berlin (RIAS), Hamburg (NDR), Stuttgart (SDR), Baden Baden (SWDR), Cologne (Gurzenich), and the Dresden Philharmonic. Elsewhere in Europe, he has performed with ensembles including Orchestre National de France, Opera de Marseille, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Dublin, Royal Philharmonic Flanders Orchestra, La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquestra Gulbenkian (Portugal), Orquestra Sinfonica de RTVE (Madrid), Leningrad Symphony Orchestra, Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Hungary State Symphony Orchestra. Each season, Mr. Inoue is invited back to orchestras in many cities, where he has, with his engaging personality and energy, won the affection and respect of musicians and audiences alike. Recent engagements have seen him perform with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Romania National Radio Symphony Orchestra, St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, KBS Symphony Orchestra, Taipei National Symphony Orchestra and at the New National Theatre Tokyo etc.
His concerts with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra and Gidon Kremer, his interpretation with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra of Mahler’s 9th symphony in 1993, and a year later the 4th with soprano Sylvia McNair have won particular acclaim. During the 1999 and 2000 seasons, Mr. Inoue embarked on a challenging ten-concert Mahler series with the New Japan Philharmonic at Sumida Triphony Hall, Tokyo, resulting in what was hailed as “the highest level of Mahler performances ever to be heard in Japan.” His CD recordings of Mahler’s 4th, 5th and 6th symphonies with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra received similarly high praise, as did the live recording of the world premiere of Thierry Eschaich’s “Vertiges de la Croix”, performed with the Orchestre National de Lille in June 2004 and released on Universal Music.
One of Mr. Inoue’s daring projects began in April 1999 when he conducted a new production of Puccini’s “Turandot”, a co-production between Bunkamura and the Edinburgh Festival. Audiences at the festival were enchanted by this refreshing interpretation and in Japan fans were treated to performances at Bunkamura for two consecutive years in April 2000 and 2001. At the head of the New Japan Philharmonic he has begun a series of concerts entitled CONCERT OPERA, with productions including Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” and Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci” in September in 2000; Korngold’s “Die tote Stadt” in 2001, and with R. Strauss’ “Ariadne auf Naxos” in 2002.
He conducted Shostakovich Symphonies intensively in Russia, Romania and Japan in 2006/07 and 2007/08 seasons, including the realization of a complete Shostakovich Symphonic Cycle in Tokyo from November to December in 2007 with five Russian and Japanese orchestras including the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the New Japan Philharmonic.
From 2007 to 2018, he was engaged as Artistic Adviser of the Ishikawa Ongakudo and as Music Director of the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, with which he very successfully toured Europe in the summer of 2008. Also, from 2014 to 2018 he served as the Principal Conductor of the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra.
The highlights of Mr. Inoue’s recent activities since his return after a rest because of serious illness include the general direction of the new production of Mozart “Le Nozze di Figaro: What The Gardener Saw” in collaboration with the stage director Hideki Noda in 2015 (successful fourteen concerts in ten cities in Japan) and the general direction (including the staging) of the theater piece of Bernstein “Mass” for the 55th Osaka International Festival 2017. Mr. Inoue’s Box-set “Complete Shostakovich Symphonies at Hibiya Public Hall” (twelve CDs), released at the end of February 2017 and sold out immediately, won the Special Prize of the Special Category of the prestigious 55th Record Academy Award 2017, Japan.
Mr. Inoue used to keep ducks at his home.
Christian Tetzlaff has been one of the most sought-after violinists and exciting musicians on the classical music scene for many years. “The greatest performance of the work I’ve ever heard,” Tim Ashley wrote in the Guardian about his interpretation of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Daniel Harding. In the Frankfurter Rundschau Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich called it virtually a “rediscovery” of this frequently played work.
Concerts with Christian Tetzlaff often become an existential experience for interpreter and audience alike; old familiar works suddenly appear in an entirely new light. In addition, he frequently turns his attention to forgotten masterpieces like Joseph Joachim’s Violin Concerto, which he successfully championed, and attempts to establish important new works in the repertoire, such as the Violin Concerto by Jörg Widmann, which he premiered. He has an unusually extensive repertoire and gives approximately 100 concerts every year. Christian Tetzlaff served as Artist in Residence with the Berlin Philharmonic, participated in a concert series over several seasons with New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James Levine and appears regularly as a guest with such ensembles as the Vienna and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, the Concertgebouw Orchestra and London’s leading orchestras, working with leading conductors like Andris Nelsons, Robin Ticciati and Vladimir Jurowski.
Apart from his tremendous expertise on the violin, there are three things that make the musician, who was born in Hamburg in 1966 and now lives in Berlin with his family, unique. He takes the musical text literally, he understands music as language, and he sees great works as narratives which reflect existential experiences. What sounds so obvious is an unusual approach in the everyday concert routine.
Christian Tetzlaff tries to follow the musical text as closely as possible – without regard for “performance tradition” and without allowing himself the customary technical simplifications on the violin – often making well-known works appear in new clarity and richness. As a violinist Tetzlaff tries to disappear behind the work – and that paradoxically makes his interpretations extremely personal.
Secondly, Christian Tetzlaff “speaks” with his violin. Like human speech, his playing comprises a wide range of expressive means and is not aimed solely at harmoniousness or virtuosic brilliance. Above all, however, he regards the masterpieces of music history as narratives about existential matters. The great composers have focussed on intense feelings, great happiness and serious crises in their music, and as a musician Christian Tetzlaff also explores the limits of feelings and musical expression. Many works deal with nothing less than life and death. Christian Tetzlaff’s goal is to convey that to the audience.
Essential to this approach are the courage to take risks, technical brilliance, openness and alertness to life. Significantly, Christian Tetzlaff played in youth orchestras for many years. His teacher at the Lübeck University of Music was Uwe-Martin Haiberg, for whom musical interpretation is the key to violin technique – not the other way around. Christian Tetzlaff founded his own string quartet in 1994, and chamber music is still as important to him as his work as a soloist with and without orchestra. The Tetzlaff Quartet has received such awards as the Diapason d’or, and the trio with his sister Tanja Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt was nominated for a Grammy. Christian Tetzlaff has also received numerous awards for his solo CD recordings. In September 2017, his recent solo recording of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas was released.
Christian Tetzlaff plays a violin made by the German violin maker Peter Greiner and teaches regularly at the Kronberg Academy.
In the 2017/18 season Christian Tetzlaff can be experienced on four continents, among others
with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony and London Philharmonic Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic and Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich under the baton of conductors such as Zubin Mehta, Sir Simon Rattle, Paavo Järvi, Manfred Honeck, Robin Ticciati and Vladimir Jurowsky.
With the Tetzlaff Quartet, in trio with Tanja Tetzlaff and Lars Vogt or solo performances, he will be in New York, London, in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin.
