Artists:
Nodoka Okisawa – conductor
Michael Collins – clarinet

Programme:
WEBER Overture, Der Freischütz
WEBER Clarinet Concerto No. 1
-interval-
BRAHMS Symphony No. 1

Conductoe: Nodoka Okisawa. A little information about her: she won the Besançon competition in 2019 and in 2018 she won the Tokyo International Music Competition for Conducting.  From 2020 until 2022 she was assistant to Kirill Petrenko and stepped in for Petrenko with Berlin Phil in March this year. Nodoka has been appointed 14th Chief Conductor of the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra from March 2023 and is the Münchner Symphoniker’s Artist in Residence for 22/23.

The spotlight is then on the brilliant Michael Collins as he demonstrates all that the clarinet has to offer in Weber’s radiant first clarinet concerto. The work was embellished by Weber’s clarinettist friend Heinrich Baermann, for whom it was written, and the result is abundant in melody playing to the clarinet’s strengths.

Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 is full of in melting lyricism and dynamic expansion. Brahms looked to Beethoven for inspiration, and his own version of the Ode to Joy (taken from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony) can be heard in the final movement.

Free Insights Talk

6.30-7pm, Harpur Suite

Michael Collins (clarinet) in conversation with Bekah Cork (Head of Concerts & Residencies)