SUWANAI — NHK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA — LUISI

In 2025, the Dresdner Musikfestspiele brings the NHK Symphony Orchestra, renowned throughout the world as one of Asia’s leading orchestras, to Dresden for the first time, where it gives two performances. Under the baton of its chief conductor Fabio Luisi, the former general music director of the State Opera of Saxony in Dresden, it will join forces with the outstanding Japanese violinist Akiko Suwanai to interpret Alban Berg’s astoundingly beautiful and moving Violin Concerto »Dem Andenken eines Engels« (To the Memory of an Angel) on the evening before the Festival’s official opening night. This was the last work completed by Berg in 1935, after he had received the news of the death of Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius, who was only 18 when she died of polio. Before this, the musicians offer a calling-card from their homeland, »Three Film Scores« by Tōru Takemitsu, which the composer assembled in 1994/95. This program, which could not have been tailored better to the Frauenkirche, ends with the Fourth Symphony by Johannes Brahms, his last contribution to this genre. It is one of the composer’s most popular and frequently-performed orchestra works today.

AKIKO SUWANAI VIOLIN
NHK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
FABIO LUISI CONDUCTOR

Tōru Takemitsu »Three Film Scores«
Alban Berg Concerto for Violin and Orchestra »To the Memory of an Angel«
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E-minor Op. 98