A musical journey with the brass and percussion of the Berliner Philharmoniker

With timpani and trumpets: The musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker prove time and again that brass instruments are a perfect match for percussion instruments – also in this concert, which opens with Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man.

The popular piece, whose theme Copland later used in the finale of his Third Symphony, was written at the suggestion of Eugene Goossens: after the USA entered the Second World War, the British conductor had ordered patriotic fanfares from various US composers, which he hoped would make “rousing and significant contributions to the war effort”. In homage and response, the American composer Joan Tower wrote her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman: captivating music characterised by rhythmic vitality and colourful orchestration.

Soliloquy of a Bhiksuni by the adopted American and Varèse student Chou Wen-Chung, a work unmistakably inspired by Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question, juxtaposes the musical traditions of China and the USA. Varèse also exerted a great influence on André Jolivet, in whose Suite en concert the deliberate primitivism and archaism are already reflected in the instrumentation, since the flute and percussion are among the oldest instruments known to mankind. Finally, the unusual evening concludes with Modest Mussorgsky’s well-known cycle Pictures at an Exhibition – in a skilful arrangement by Elgar Howarth.

Brass and percussionists of the Berliner Philharmoniker

Thomas Guggeis

Emmanuel Pahud