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Orchestra will return to Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie and then perform in
Zurich, Geneva and Bern -
New programme showcases Järvi’s reworking of Tchaikovsky’s Christmas favourite Nutcracker as a Dramatic Symphony
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Concert experience also includes Grieg’s Piano Concerto with soloist Olga Scheps
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Baltic Sea Philharmonic to perform entire programme from memory, as one flow of music, with smooth transitions and no intermission
Berlin 15 June 2022. The Baltic Sea Philharmonic and Kristjan Järvi will take the seasonal concert to a new dimension on their ‘Nutcracker Reimagined’ tour of Germany and Switzerland in December. Performing four concerts in four days, the orchestra travels to Hamburg, Zurich, Geneva and Bern with a new programme that has as its spectacular climax Järvi’s own arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s final ballet and Christmas favourite The Nutcracker. Russian-German pianist Olga Scheps joins the Baltic Sea Philharmonic to perform Grieg’s Piano Concerto. The orchestra will play the entire programme in signature Baltic Sea Philharmonic style – completely from memory, with no music stands on stage and with most of the musicians standing up and free to move and interact with each other. There will be no intermission and the music will flow from one work to the next with smooth transitions.
Hamburg return and Swiss debuts
The Baltic Sea Philharmonic opens its ‘Nutcracker Reimagined’ tour at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg on 11 December. The performance will be the orchestra’s fourth at this already iconic concert venue. The ensemble and Kristjan Järvi featured in the Elbphilharmonie’s first season in 2017 with their groundbreaking ‘Waterworks’ concert experience, and next performed there in June 2019. A critic of the Hamburger Abendblatt praised the orchestra then as a ‘completely different league’. The Baltic Sea Philharmonic then joined British rock band Bastille for a charity concert in January 2020. The orchestra was scheduled to return to the Elbphilharmonie in September 2020 and March 2021 but both concerts had to be cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Baltic Sea Philharmonic follows up its Elbphilharmonie concert on 11 December with a debut tour of Switzerland, travelling first to Zurich for a performance at the Tonhalle Zurich (12 December), and then performing at Victoria Hall in Geneva (13 December) and finally at Casino Bern in the Swiss capital (14 December). Tickets for the concerts in Zurich, Bern and Hamburg are already on sale. Tickets for the performance in Geneva will go on sale in September.
Christmas comes early with a newly transformed Nutcracker
Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballet The Nutcracker is a seasonal favourite, and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic will wrap up this musical Christmas treasure in the imaginative shape of a Dramatic Symphony, arranged by Kristjan Järvi. With this reworking, Järvi completes his transformations of Tchaikovsky’s three ballets, after his previous arrangements of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty. As with those reworkings, this Dramatic Symphony showcases all the quintessential colour and drama of Tchaikovsky’s theatre music. The new Nutcracker will have its debut on the Baltic Sea Philharmonic’s ‘Meresillad’ tour of Germany and Estonia in September, before the orchestra presents it as a seasonal spectacular in Hamburg, Zurich, Geneva and Bern.
The Baltic Sea Philharmonic is excited to be joined for the first time by pianist Olga Scheps in Grieg’s Piano Concerto, a enduringly popular work that was written by the Norwegian composer when he was just 25 years old. Scheps is an ECHO Klassik award-winning soloist, with her debut album Chopin garnering her the Newcomer of the Year award in 2010 at the age of 24. Since 2009 she has been an exclusive Sony Classical artist, and has recorded nine albums for the label.
Baltic Sea Philharmonic – a revolution in music and culture
The Baltic Sea Philharmonic takes the orchestral concert experience to a new dimension. Every performance is a voyage of musical discovery, as the musicians perform the entire programme from memory, creating a one-of-a-kind artistic journey. Each concert is a unique spectacle of sound, light, visual art, technology, choreography and playing by heart, and under the electrifying baton of Music Director and Founding Conductor Kristjan Järvi every performance has a special energy that is absolutely infectious. But even more than this, as a community of musicians from ten Nordic countries, the Baltic Sea Philharmonic transcends boundaries and has become a movement for bringing people together. Embodying all that is innovative and progressive about the Nordic region, this visionary ensemble is taking the traditional orchestral model further than ever before. ‘It is a living breathing creature, with boundless energy and enthusiasm for the new – an adventure in itself,’ says Kristjan Järvi.
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