Arvo Volmer / Orchestra Haydn

The concert that the Orchestra Haydn of Bolzano and Trento offers at the Opera of Florence opens on the soft green carpet of a gambling hall. Jeu de carts, the ironic ballet that Igor’ Stravinsky created in 1936 at the height of his neoclassical period for the American Ballet, is in fact a real poker game, divided into three hands, in which the cards are trying to defeat the diabolic Jolly. The second part of the program is entirely devoted to Gustav Mahler with lieder orchestrated by Luciano Berio, including those dedicated to Zubin Mehta for his fiftieth birthday and performed for the first time by the Haydn Orchestra in 1986. Following is the Adagio of the Symphony No.10, the first and only movement of the last completed work of the great Bohemian composer.

Program

Igor' Fëdorovič Stravinskij
Jeu de cartes

Gustav Mahler
Sechs Frühe Lieder (orchestration by Luciano Berio)
Fünf Frühe Lieder (orchestration by Luciano Berio)
Adagio from Symphony n. 10 in F-sharp major

Artists

Conductor
Arvo Volmer

Orchestra Haydn Orchester

Baritone
Dietrich Henschel

Orchestra Haydn of Bolzano and Trento

Established in 1960 by the municipalities and the provinces of Bolzano and Trento, it has a repertoire ranging from baroque to contemporary music by composers such as Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono and Luciano Berio, who entrusted it with first performances of their works. The orchestra has performed with great conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Neville Marriner, Alberto Zedda and Riccardo Chailly, while in the role of Principal Conductor have alternated Antonio Pedrotti, Hermann Michael, Alun Francis, Christian Mandeal, Ola Rudner and Arvo Volmer (since 2014). A guest of numerous international festivals, it boasts a large catalogue of recordings for labels including RCA, Universal and Naxos. From 2013 Daniele Spini is responsible for the artistic programming.

ARVO VOLMER

Born in 1962 in Tallinn, he studied conducting first at the Estonian State Conservatory and then at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in St. Petersburg, where in 1990 he graduated under Ravil Martynov. He continued his studies with Helmuth Rilling in the US and in 1989 he won the special prize and the fourth prize at the Nikolai Malko Competition in Copenhagen. At the age of twenty-two he debuted at the Estonian National Opera, and was appointed musical director in 2004. Chief Conductor of the Estonian National Orchestra from 1993 to 2001 and Artistic and Music Director of the Finnish Oulu Symphony Orchestra from 1994 to 2005, in 2004 he was appointed Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Since September 2014, he is the Principal Conductor of the Orchestra Haydn of Bolzano and Trento.

DIETRICH HENSCHEL

Born in Berlin in 1967, he studied there with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He continued his formation in Munich with Hanno Blaschke and in this city debuted in 1990 as the protagonist in the first performance of the opera Le Précepteur by Michèle Reverdy. After an intense period at the Theater Kiel, in which he sang many operas including Die Zauberflöte, Le Nozze di Figaro, Pelléas et Mélisande and L’Orfeo, it was with Der Prinz von Homburg by Hans Werner Henze at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and Doktor Faust by Ferruccio Busoni Opéra de Lyon that he began his international career. Particularly active in the concert repertoire favoring lieder and oratorios, he  has performed with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra.