Orquesta de Extremadura | "Travel Chronicles" Antje Weithaas

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Price

10 €

Pre-concert talk

19:00 h

Advance sale

taquilla.orquestadeextremadura.com

What's it about

A new season of the Orquesta de Extremadura concerts arrives at the Palacio de Congresos de Villanueva de la Serena. It will be on Friday, November 13 at 20:00 hours with a talk beforehand at 19:00. On this occasion, conductor and violinist Antje Weithaas directs the OEX with a program titled "Travel Chronicles" with pieces by Mendelssohn. The ticket price is 10 euros. Advance sale at https://taquilla.orquestadeextremadura.com/ and at the Culture department. At the congress palace on the same day of the concert from 18:30 hours. Programme 19:00 - pre-concert talk 20:00 - concert 1. Félix Mendelssohn. The Hebrides, "Fingal's Cave", op.26 (1830) Félix Mendelssohn. Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64 (1845) 2. Félix Mendelssohn. Symphony No. 4 in A major, op.90, "Italian" (1833) Antje Weithaas, conductor and violin Few composers have had the ability to transform their experiences into music with the naturalness of Felix Mendelssohn. In the summer of 1829, before the cave of Fingal on the wind-swept Scottish coast, he jotted down the first bars of the Hebrides Overture in a letter. Two years later, dazzled by Italy, he began the Italian Symphony, his most sun-drenched and extroverted work. Some time after such journeys, the Violin Concerto, companion of multiple days, was maturing, which took six years to complete. Antje Weithaas arrives at the OEX as soloist and conductor to gather in a single night the three great musical diaries of an insatiable traveller. They no longer rhyme, they no longer sing! They no longer ask the traveller to tell the legend of the gentle adventurer… José María Gabriel y Galán. The Shepherds of My Grandfather Antje Weithaas Awarded the OPUS Klassik 2025 as Instrumentalist of the Year, Antje Weithaas is one of the most outstanding musical personalities of our time. Her extraordinary career began very early: after numerous successes in competitions, she quickly established herself as a young virtuoso soloist alongside renowned orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the leading German radio orchestras. But what makes her one of the "great violinists of our time" (Fono Forum) goes far beyond a brilliant start: it is the depth and sincerity of an artistically mature and consciously built career, sustained by lasting collaborations, interpretative maturity, artistic integrity and vast experience. With an imposing stage presence and a fine sense of nuance, she crafts deeply personal interpretations of the great masterpieces, always without affectation and in the service of the music, never in pursuit of mere effect. Antje Weithaas and pianist Dénes Várjon were distinguished in 2024 with the Annual Prize of the German Record Critics for their complete recording of the piano and violin sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven. Published by CAvi-music and digitally distributed by Deutsche Grammophon, these recordings have already been presented in integral concerts at the Casals Forum in Kronberg, in Budapest and also in China. Upcoming performances are planned at the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, at the Beethovenfest in Bonn and at the Wigmore Hall in London. With an impressive discography of thirty albums and a broad repertoire covering the most important violin concertos from Classicism to the present day, Antje Weithaas is a first-order European authority on the art of the violin. She continues her acclaimed recording career with her most recent studio album: a recording of the Violin Concerto and Serenade for Strings by Antonín Dvořák with the Camerata Bern, recently published on the CAvi-music label associated with Deutsche Grammophon, presumably the first recording of these works led from the violin by the soloist herself. This was preceded by the OPUS Klassik-winning recording of Pēteris Vasks's Violin Concerto No. 2 In Evening Light, also with the Camerata Bern. Antje Weithaas maintains a prolonged artistic collaboration with this ensemble, of which she was artistic director for nearly a decade. She is currently a much sought-after leader-conductor with international chamber orchestras and recently toured South America as soloist with the Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, received with enthusiasm by both critics and audiences. Previous recordings —such as the reference interpretation of the Beethoven and Berg violin concertos (with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra conducted by Steven Sloane), the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and the orchestral version of his String Quartet No. 3 with the Camerata Bern, the complete recordings of the solo violin sonatas and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach, the violin concertos by Max Bruch, the Violin Concerto by Robert Schumann and the Double Concerto by Johannes Brahms (all with the NDR Radiophilharmonie conducted by Andrew Manze and Hermann Bäumer), as well as works by Eugène Ysaÿe, Aram Khachaturian and Jörg Widmann — highlight the stylistic breadth and depth of her art. With the Arcanto Quartet she recorded critically acclaimed albums for Harmonia Mundi dedicated to works by Brahms, Béla Bartók, Maurice Ravel, Henri Dutilleux, Claude Debussy, Franz Schubert and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Antje Weithaas began playing the violin at the age of four and a half and studied at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin with Werner Scholz. After her first successes in competitions —including the Graz Kreisler Competition, the Leipzig Bach Competition and the Joseph Joachim International Violin Competition in Hanover—, she obtained a professorship at her alma mater in 2004. Since then she has been internationally recognised as a violin pedagogue of the highest level. Together with Oliver Wille she serves as artistic director of the Joseph Joachim Competition. Antje Weithaas plays a violin built by Peter Greiner in 2001.

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