As part of a nine-day festival celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Alan Gilbert and the NDR perform a special gala program featuring music by three of today’s foremost living composers. Designed to showcase the Elbphilharmonie’s spatial possibilities and fully immersive surround sound, the program includes two orchestral fanfares by John Adams, Tromba lontana and the high-octane Short Ride in a Fast Machine; Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Wing on Wing; and Thomas Adès’s recent Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, performed with its dedicatee, Gilmore Artist Kirill Gerstein, as soloist (Jan 11 & 12). Complete with a dazzling drone display from Holland’s DRIFT duo to light up the Hamburg city sky, the January 11 concert will stream live on Europe’s ARTE television network. Find the full list of events here.
As another high point of his winter with the NDR, Gilbert helms two programs during the orchestra’s six-concert February festival “Age of Anxiety – An American Journey” (Feb 11–20). Named for the W. H. Auden poem that inspired Bernstein’s Second Symphony and characterizes the period as a troubled and restless time, the festival explores a wide panorama of 20th-century American music. Read more about the festival here.