He followed in the footsteps of György Széll, Pierre Boulez and Lorin Maazel as leader of the Cleveland Orchestra, a post he occupied from 1984 until 2002, before his heart drew him back to Europe. In 2004, he moved to Hamburg where he took over direction of the North-German Radio (NDR) Symphony Orchestra; this year is his last season with the orchestra.

He has elected to program Con Brio by the clarinettist and composer Jörg Widmann who has already performed several times with the National Philharmonic Orchestra in Hungary: this is a twelve-minute exciting and life-affirming overture and was commissioned by the Bavarian Radio Orchestra and premièred in 2008 by conductor Mariss Jansons.

The composer had to write a work that would fit between Beethoven’s seventh and eight symphonies and its title is an allusion to Beethoven’s markings for these two works. Widmann is thirty-seven and one of the world’s premiere clarinettists – there are few who can play Mozart’s masterpiece with such wrapt concentration. The other star guest this evening is Christiane Oelze who made her debut at the Palace of Arts in December 2006 with the Linz Bruckner Orchestra, and more recently was a soloist with the Austrian Tonkünstler Orchestra.

Oelze has performed in Mahler’s 2nd symphony with Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, John Eliot Gardiner and the New York Philharmonic, and sung in Mahler’s 4th symphony with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Daniel Gatti. Mahler finished his shortest symphony in 1901 and is perhaps also the lightest in weight of all his nine essays in the genre. The principal theme of the work is taken from one of Mahler’s Wunderhorn songs, written in 1892: the final movement is a setting for soprano of a verse describing a child’s vision of heaven.

Tickets: 2500, 4200, 6900, 7900 Ft

NDR Symphony Orchestra

When: 9 September 2010, 7.30 pm - 9.40 pm
Where: Bartók Béla National Concert Hall

Jörg Widmann: Con Brio – Concert Overture
Mozart: Clarinet Concerto, K. 622
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G major

Source: Palace of Arts