Arts & Events

AROUND AND ABOUT MUSIC: Vienna Philharmonic Returns to Berkeley for Cal Performances Residency & Symposium

By Ken Bullock
Friday February 28, 2014 - 04:26:00 PM

The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra returns to Berkeley next weekend, March 7-9, for Cal Performances' annual orchestra residency, including three concerts and a symposium, with lectures, panel discussions and chamber concert, 'The Vienna Philharmonic, 100 Years After the Outbreak of World War One, featuring scholars and musicians from Vienna, Berkeley and elsewhere in North America. The symposium is open to the public as a free event.  

Lorin Maazel of the Munich Philharmonic (replacing Daniele Gatti, who is ill), will conduct the Vienna Philharmonic at 8 p. m. Friday, March 7, with guest soprano Juliane Banse, in Schubert's Symphony No. 8 in B minor ("The Unfinished") and Mahler's Symphony No. 4 in G major. Andris Nelsons of the Boston Symphony conducts Saturday at 8 with Haydn's Symphony No. 90 in C major and Brahms'Symphony No. 3 in F major, Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn. Franz Weisel-Most of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera will conduct Sunday at 3 with Mozart's Symphony in F major, Staud's On Comparative Meteorology, and Bruckner's Symphony No. 6 in A major. All performances at Zellerbach Hall on the UC campus near Bancroft and Telegraph. 

Pre-performance talks, free to ticketholders, will be delivered by Professor Clemens Hellsberg, acing Chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic.  

Friday at 3 p. m. the concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic will hold a master class for the UC Berkeley Orchestra string section, open to the public. 

On Saturday the 8th, from 10 a. m. at Hertz Hall on the UC campus, the symposium will feature scholars from Vienna, Berkeley and elsewhere in panels and lectures such as: "Viennese Modernism," "Wartime and Postwar Memories Reconsidered" (by Dr. Christian Meyer, director of the Schoenberg Center, Vienna), "Making Peace After War," "Mastery of the Past," and "The Responsibility of the Artist." At 2 p. m. a string sextet from the Vienna Philharmonic will play, also a pianist and singer with songs by Schoenberg, Berg and other Viennese composers.  

Tickets for the concerts start at $35, with discounts available. calperfs.berkeley.edu