- Musicians will perform both text and music of the famous masterpiece ‘The Tempest’
- Orchestra to return to Tallinn in September as part of Estonia-focused ‘Meresillad’ tour
Berlin 8 August 2022. The Baltic Sea Philharmonic will make its debut in a monastery, located in the district of Pirita in Tallin on 12 August – an open-air concert in the historic ruins of the Pirita Convent. Building on the tradition of the Birgitta Festival as music theatre festival, Kristjan Järvi and the orchestra will bring to stage their vision of William Shakespeare’s renowned ‘The Tempest’, written at the beginning of the seventeenth century. 300 years later Sibelius created a masterpiece from Shakespeare’s material that is considered one of the Finnish composer’s greatest works because of its amazing wealth of ideas and invention. The concert will be enriched with music written by Kristjan Järvi including Midnight Sun, Aurora and Frozen Tears creating an atmosphere ‘filled with fantasy, magic, captivating irreality, and poignance’ according to Järvi. The conductor and orchestra members will perform both the text by Shakespeare and the music by Sibelius, by using their instruments and their voices. What is special about the performance: It is a co-creation of musicians, in which the entire orchestra plays the co-director’s part and everything will be played in the orchestras signature style, entirely from memory, with smooth transitions and without intermission. The concert will be accompanied by special lighting and sound design. The audio-visual script has been created by Sunbeam Productions.
Returning to Estonia in September
Kristjan Järvi and the Baltic Sea Philharmonic will be back in Tallinn on 21 September. This is the final destination on the Baltic Sea Philharmonic’s ‘Meresillad’ tour of Germany and Estonia (15–21 September). The tour, the Estonian language title of which translates as ‘sea bridges’, celebrates Estonia, which as one of the most progressive and innovative Nordic countries is a natural fit with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic. The tour programme includes music by Estonian composers past and present, with works by Eduard Tubin (1905–1982) and Jaan Rääts (1932–2020) as well as Liis Jürgens, who is a harpist in the Baltic Sea Philharmonic. The programme will also feature Kristjan Järvi’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker as a Dramatic Symphony. This completes his trilogy of reworkings of the Russian composer’s ballets, after Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty.
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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