Sounds like Gilbert
Introducing the New Chief Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra
The opening concert of the 2019/20 season is at the same time the first concert with Alan Gilbert on the rostrum as chief conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. Who is the new man in charge of the orchestra? What makes him tick as an artist? The conductor gives some musical answers in the course of the three-week »Sounds like Gilbert« festival. Six programmes full of variety mark the beginning of Alan Gilbert's intensive work with the Elbphilharmonie's Orchestra in Residence.
The concert that opens the new season certainly sounds very much like Gilbert: the born-and-bred New Yorker with Japanese roots discovers his personal »musical continent« together with the musicians and the audience. The symphony »Jeremiah« by Leonard Bernstein, a work almost unknown here in Germany, Charles Ives's »The Unanswered Question« and »Amériques« by Edgard Varèse all take us to Gilbert's native America.
With the first performance of a work by the NDR's current Composer in Residence Unsuk Chin, the new chief conductor also places contemporary music in the limelight. But the concert opens with the first symphony composed by Hamburg native Johannes Brahms: as a European by choice, Gilbert feels a deep bond with the tradition of his new orchestra, to which he pays tribute here.
The other concerts in this mini-festival likewise bear witness to Gilbert's diversity: Magnus Lindberg's colossal opus »Kraft« in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall, Haydn at the Laeiszhalle, Beethoven as reflected in contemporary music. And the new boss can even be heard playing the viola in a chamber concert. Sounds very much like Gilbert!
