Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 100 in G major (“Military”), Hob. I:100
Joseph Haydn: Scena di Berenice – concert aria (Berenice, che fai?), Hob. XXIVa:10

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Franz Schubert-Franz Liszt: Die junge Nonne
Franz Schubert-Franz Liszt: Gretchen am Spinnrade
Franz Liszt: Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher – dramatic scena for soprano and orchestra (Hungarian premiere of the 1858 version)
Franz Liszt: Festklänge – symphonic poem

Réka Kristóf soprano

Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor: Martin Haselböck

The Austrian Martin Haselböck is an extraordinarily versatile individual: he is a choirmaster, organist, orchestra founder and musicologist. The early music expert will conduct the works of Haydn at the front of the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra. After the interval, as a recognised interpreter of Liszt, he will lead the orchestra in, along with two transcriptions Liszt made of songs by Schubert and a rendition of a rarely played symphonic poem, the Hungarian premiere of an obscure work. Haydn’s concert aria, the two song transcriptions and Liszt’s dramatic scena will be interpreted by the outstanding young Hungarian talent Réka Kristóf, a soprano who rose to prominence through her performances in the Virtuózok television show.

Joseph Haydn composed his Symphony No. 100 in G major on his second trip to London (1794-95). The second movement, Allegretto, is from time to time dashingly driven forward by various percussion effects (“Turkish” military instruments, in fact, which were fashionable at the time). This, together with the trumpet fanfare towards the end of the movement, earned the symphony its “Military” nickname. Composed at the same time as the symphony, and similarly linked to Haydn’s second London trip, is the Scena di Berenice, which creates a dramatic atmosphere on the concert stage in the form of a concert aria – a popular genre of the era. The text comes from an excerpt of Antigono, an opera by Pietro Metastasio. Weeping for Demetrio, Berenice laments her bitter fate, yearning for her lover to become her companion in death. Schubert’s two songs, Die junge Nonne (“The Young Nun”) and Gretchen am Spinnrade (“Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”), both originally accompanied by piano, offer insight into the mysteries of the female soul from different perspectives. In another scena as dramatic as Hadyn’s Berenice, Liszt’s Jeanne d’Arc (1845–1874/75) features Alexandre Dumas’s poetry set to music. Although the version of this composition written for piano accompaniment has also survived, this time the audience will get to know the so-far unpublished 1858 orchestral score. The programme will conclude with Liszt’s symphonic poem Festklänge, which made its world premiere in 1854 as preliminary piece before a performance of Schiller’s dramatic poem, Die Huldigung der Künste.