The Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben invites you to a benefit concert at the Elbphilharmonie and presents selected scholarship holders. Guest stars include saxophonist and alumna Asya Fateyeva and conductor and alumnus Fedor Rudin. The young artists invited to perform in various chamber music ensembles on the stage of the Grand Hall demonstrate stylistic diversity and great skill. The Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben string ensemble under the direction of Fedor Rudin, the award-winning Amelio Trio and the duo Fabian Johannes Egger (flute) and Simon Haje (piano) will be performing.

The Hamburg-based Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben has been supporting top young musicians since 1962. Around 300 scholarship holders receive lasting and individual support through the loan of valuable string instruments, scholarships and sponsorships and performances with co-operation partners such as festivals and major orchestras.

On the program are works by Olga Rayeva, Edison Denisov, Johannes Brahms, Charles Ives, Robert Muczynski, Ernst Krenek, Dmitri Schostakovitch and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Olga Rayeva about her piece ‘Madrigal per un Grillo’ for string orchestra:

“Humans are part of nature, yet at the same time they oppose it. Humans’ longing for paradise is rooted in their longing for reunion with nature. This corresponds to the desire to rediscover themselves as God’s creation (as the immaculate Adam before the Fall and as the sensual Eve)… Although this is a projection, it is the basis of part of our mythology… 

The spiritual culture created by humans—the noosphere—is, as part of the biosphere, also a new stage of its development… 

In different eras, humans asked questions about themselves and their place in nature and answered these questions in different ways. I often perceive the present era as similar to the late Renaissance and early Baroque era, with its mysticism and immersion in darkness, but sound now becomes a metaphor. Therefore, I turn to the madrigal genre. But fragments of the madrigal exist here only as half-erased frescoes, while barely perceptible rays of light (in their tonal equivalent – like natural scales) complete the picture.”