Romantic Seascapes
BERLIN SYMPHONY
ORCHESTRA
ORCHESTRA
Dubai, UAE
Prepare yourself for a special evening on Wednesday 7th February, as the 2024 InClassica International Music Festival, organised by SAMIT Event Group. welcomes Canadian violinist James Ehnes, a two-time Grammy Award Winner, Gramophone Award and JUNO Award recipient, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Member of the Order of Canada, and awardee of the 2017 Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Taking to the stage alongside the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and UK conductor John Warner, the musicians will open the concert with the Overture to Bedřich Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, a comic opera in three acts first performed in 1866, with music heavily influenced by Czech folk tunes. Next comes Composer-in-Residence Alexey Shor’s Violin Concerto No. 1 ‘Seascapes’, a four-movement composition that adds to a long line of works inspired by the sublime beauty of the sea, featuring haunting melodic lines as well as complex technical passages that promise to carry audiences on a musical journey of their own. Warner and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra shall then bring the evening to a close with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s resounding Symphony No. 5, an epic composition written in 1888 that has gone on to become one of the composer's most popular works, and is widely regarded as an excellent example of his trademark musical style.
Highlights of 2024/25 include John's debuts with the Athens State Orchestra and Franz Schubert Filharmonia, a return to the Berliner Symphoniker at the Philharmonie in Berlin, a new production of Puccini's Tosca with Oxford Opera and concerts with his own Orchestra for the Earth. The past season saw debuts with the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana, Slovak State Philharmonic, Berliner Symphonieker and Armenian Symphony Orchestra, and in previous seasons he has also conducted orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic and worked with soloists such as Thomas Hampson, James Ehnes, Wu Wei and Camille Thomas.
2024/25 will be his fourth season as Music Director of Oxford Opera, with whom he has conducted several productions including most recently La Traviata and Die Zauberflöte. He has also conducted at Glyndebourne, Palau de les Arts Valencia and Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in repertoire ranging from Janáček to Puccini to Mozart. As a frequent guest conductor with Spectra Ensemble he has put a special emphasis on underperformed operas by women composers, leading critically acclaimed productions of works by Ethel Smyth and Amy Beach.
Read MoreHis pioneering work with Orchestra for the Earth, which he founded in 2017, takes him around Europe with a wide variety of concerts that bring together music and nature, collaborating with leading artists, scientists and charities to raise awareness about the climate and environmental crises.
A committed advocate of contemporary music, John has been invited to commission and conduct world premieres at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, Het Concertgebouw and, most recently, a week-long residency at the Beijing Music Festival which included four world premieres and five Chinese premieres of contemporary classics by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Huang Ruo, Sir George Benjamin and Messiaen.
John honed his craft as assistant to many of the world’s leading conductors, such as Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Karina Canellakis, Robin Ticciati and Edward Gardner, working with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, London Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Dresden Staatskapelle, Wiener Symphoniker, Les Siècles and others.
He studied music at the University of Oxford, graduating with First Class Honours in 2016 and an MSt with Distinction in 2017. He also writes on music, with frequent publications in the Wagner Journal and an upcoming book published by Routledge. He is a regular guest lecturer at the Curtis Institute and Johns Hopkins University in the US.
James Ehnes has established himself as one of the most sought-after musicians on the international stage. Gifted with a rare combination of stunning virtuosity, serene lyricism and an unfaltering musicality, Ehnes is a favourite guest at the world’s most celebrated concert halls.
Recent orchestral highlights include the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, San Francisco Symphony, London Symphony, NHK Symphony and Munich Philharmonic. Throughout the 22/23 season, Ehnes continues as Artist in Residence with the National Arts Centre of Canada. Alongside his concerto work, Ehnes maintains a busy recital schedule. He performs regularly at the Wigmore Hall (including the complete cycle of Beethoven Sonatas in 2019/20, and the complete violin/viola works of Brahms and Schumann in 2021/22), Carnegie Hall, Symphony Center Chicago, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Ravinia, Montreux, Verbier Festival, Dresden Music Festival and Festival de Pâques in Aix. A devoted chamber musician, he is the leader of the Ehnes Quartet and the Artistic Director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society.
Ehnes has an extensive discography and has won many awards for his recordings, including two Grammy’s, three Gramophone Awards and eleven Juno Awards. In 2021, Ehnes was announced as the recipient of the coveted Artist of the Year title in the 2021 Gramophone Awards which celebrated his recent contributions to the recording industry, including the launch of a new online recital series entitled ‘Recitals from Home’ which was released in June 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent closure of concert halls. Ehnes recorded the six Bach Sonatas and Partitas and six Sonatas of Ysaÿe from his home with state-of-the-art recording equipment and released six episodes over the period of two months. These recordings have been met with great critical acclaim by audiences worldwide and Ehnes was described by Le Devoir as being "at the absolute forefront of the streaming evolution". Ehnes began violin studies at the age of five, became a protégé of the noted Canadian violinist Francis Chaplin aged nine, and made his orchestra debut with L’Orchestre symphonique de Montréal aged 13. He continued his studies with Sally Thomas at the Meadowmount School of Music and The Juilliard School, winning the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music upon his graduation in 1997. He is a Member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Manitoba, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an honorary fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, where he is a Visiting Professor.
Ehnes plays the “Marsick” Stradivarius of 1715.
For more than five decades, the Berliner Symphoniker have been an integral part of Berlin's musical and cultural life and have enriched the German orchestra landscape. Since 1990 they have been the orchestra for all Berliners.
In addition to the popular and long-established symphony concerts that take place in the Berlin Philharmonic, the Berliner Symphoniker perform throughout Berlin and the surrounding area: They are regular guests at the Konzerthaus Berlin, the University of the Arts, the Berlin Cathedral, the Kulturbrauerei and the Chorin Monastery, among others. With guest performances in Europe and tours to North and South America, Africa and Asia as well as appearances at international festivals (including in France, Italy, Austria, Spain and Israel), the Berliner Symphoniker have presented themselves successfully worldwide and see themselves as Berlin's cultural ambassadors.
In addition to the classical, wide-ranging and popular range of concerts, the repertoire of the Berliner Symphoniker also includes special rarities - unknown and forgotten works as well as contemporary compositions.
Music communication as a special focus has always been a trademark of the orchestra. It was the Berliner Symphoniker, for example, who were the first orchestra in Berlin to develop a music education profile with school concerts and children's and family concerts and who established and promoted work with young people in the long term. Numerous CD recordings and television recordings round off the multifaceted work of the Berliner Symphoniker.
