The University Orchestra joins forces with the Dresden College of Music rock band to perform Jon Lord’s legendary “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” and Mieczysław Weinberg

Claudia Kallmeier

Dresden University Orchestra has big plans for this summer: At the summer concert on July 1, 2018 (11 a.m.), the symphony and chamber orchestras will combine. About 100 musicians will play in the new concert hall at Dresden’s Kulturpalast venue for the first time. The orchestras will be joined by a student rock band from Dresden College of Music. The concert is entitled “Aufbruch” – departure, or new beginnings – and the two works to be performed each stand for something new, but in very different ways. On the program are Jon Lord’s “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” and the German premiere of Mieczysław Weinberg’s Symphony No. 3.

The Jon Lord (1941 – 2012), a founding member of the British hard rock band Deep Purple, caused a “awakening” in music with his “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” in 1969. He is seen as a pioneer of the combination of classical music and rock.

Mieczysław Weinberg (1919 – 1996) is little-known in Germany – quite undeservedly, as the acclaimed performance of his opera “The Passenger” at the Dresden Semperoper opera house last year showed. The Dresden University Orchestra is now performing Weinberg’s Symphony No. 3 from 1949 – its first ever performance in Germany.

“For University Orchestra musicians, this is a special concert in so many ways,” says Artistic Director Filip Paluchowski. “Combining the two ensembles into one large orchestra presents us with new challenges, which we are approaching with respect and immense enjoyment. Thanks to its acoustics, the concert hall at the Kulturpalast allows for new subtleties and enables us to go even further into the extremes and details of music-making.”

“Aufbruch” – Dresden University Orchestra’s Summer concert,
Sunday, July 1, 2018, 11 a.m., Konzertsaal, Kulturpalast Dresden:
Mieczysław Weinberg: Symphony No. 3, op. 45,
Jon Lord: Concerto for Group and Orchestra.
Tickets are available in advance (17 euros, concession 7 euros) and on the day (19 euros, concession 9 euros) at the Kulturpalast, from eventim ticket partners (subject to advance booking fee), and from www.dresdnerphilharmonie.de/konzerte.
www.uniorchester-dresden.de

A rocking symphonic firework

A worthy commemoration of a modern musical milestone

Michael Ernst

When a party lacks that spark and neither host nor guests have a clue how to save the evening, perhaps all you need is to delve into the record cabinet. There’s no such thing as record cabinets anymore, you say? The older generations will remember records at least: black discs with grooves on the top and bottom. The generation after them still think CDs are modern. Young people, on the other hand, use virtual providers – or go to concerts. Concerts where they may well come across veterans from those bygone days of the silent film era (who still know about anti-static cloth and styluses).

But back to the party: Jokes about “Echo” and the Eurovision Song Contest aren’t going down well? This is a good sign! At this point, it’s time for a musical riddle. It begins with a clarinet solo that sounds like dawn. Gradually, then more and more rapidly, the sound grows and swells. Hear the strings, and enjoy how the wind section and percussion drive this orchestral piece. Has anyone guessed the composer yet? Probably not.

The pizzicato passages and wind interludes that follow may make you think of the modernism of the last century, periodically interrupted by a string segment that disrupts, surprises, and yet somehow works. Until a rock band, yes, a rock band joins the virtuoso ensemble. A rock band is the soloist in this great work – that no one has guessed yet? We’re not even ten minutes into this three-quarter hour piece (that has many more surprises to come) and it’s confusing us again. Shrill electronic beats now appear – but in a piece that is also quiet and restrained in parts. Often it’s the clarinet creating periods of calm, broken up by scintillating strings and wind, and passages for the band that simply grab your attention.

What follows is a symphonic potpourri, an orchestra with Hammond organ and electric guitar, and ultimately also a setting of lyrics by Ian Gillan. And if people haven’t guessed the composer already, they should now: Jon Lord. That is, if they’ve actually heard of him.

Jon Lord? He was Deep Purple’s gifted organist, an exceptional artist who regularly took time out to combine rock and classical music in his own unique way. Alongside the “Sarabande” – a magnificent mix of baroque and rock – his most impressive piece is probably the “Concerto for Group and Orchestra” composed in 1969. The work premiered at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Malcolm Arnold conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra – which performed together with Deep Purple. Drama and moments of lyrical beauty interspersed with amazing rock. A great tidbit to add to your party small-talk. Too young to remember it? You’ll just have to trust us.

Or you could join experts on the piece, the band, and the scene and find out for yourself first-hand at the Dresden University Orchestra summer concert on July 1. The orchestra of around 100 musicians will be making its debut in the new concert hall at the Kulturpalast under Artistic Director Filip Paluchowski, and will be joined by a rock band from Dresden College of Music. Half a century after the cult band Deep Purple formed, the Dresden performance is a worthy commemoration of this modern musical milestone.

A musical and theatrical feat

The University Orchestra with a German Weinberg premiere

Michael Ernst

In a true feat, Filip Paluchowski is taking on an almost forgotten 20^th century artist. An artist who wrote 22 symphonies, four chamber symphonies, several operas, solo concertos and countless pieces for chamber groups and movies. His personal fortunes are at the hidden heart of his oeuvre, which reflects the painful experiences of the 20^th century. Yet he is still only known to far too small an audience. His name? Mieczysław Weinberg. For a long time, he was overshadowed by his mentor and friend Dmitri Shostakovich, to whom he owed far more than just musical support. Born in Warsaw in 1919 to Moldovan Jewish parents, Weinberg fled east after the Nazi invasion. He studied music in the Soviet Union and fell foul of Stalinism (an uncle of his wife had been one of Stalin’s personal doctors and was sent to the gulag after a conspiracy), and was probably only saved by the personal intervention of Shostakovich (who wrote to Beria, chief of Stalin’s secret police).

Mieczysław Weinberg’s music was influenced by Shostakovich, but it would be a mistake to overlook the uniqueness of the younger composer’s style. True, his work also draws on and transforms folk sounds, unmistakably reflects Jewish influences, and has at its core an elegiac element that also characterizes the work of Shostakovich, who was misjudged as a “state composer”. Yet Weinberg, who lived in Moscow until his death in 1996 (and only learned very late in life that his entire family had been killed in the Warsaw Ghetto), did go his own way. Not least as he sought to come to terms with his own suffering and that experienced by those around him. Weinberg’s operatic output in particular (including “The Passenger” – an Oper Frankfurt opera house production ran just a few times at the Semperoper, Dresden’s opera house, in 2017) has experienced something of a renaissance in recent years, but his work deserves a much broader place in the repertoires of concert halls, orchestras, and chamber ensembles. The International Shostakovich Festival in Gohrisch led the way.

It is great that the Dresden University Orchestra has now also “discovered” this composer. Filip Paluchowski has been the artistic director of this orchestra of students, staff, and graduates of TUD since 2015. At the summer concert, he is turning his attention to Mieczysław Weinberg’s Symphony No. 3, which has never been performed in Germany before. The challenging piece showcases both symphonic tradition and its own unique sounds. Symphony No. 3 is a classic four-movement opus written during the years of the “formalism” debate, and was revised by Weinberg around 1959. At the heart of the symphony are majestic passages and vibrant wind solos, and the rousing piece radiates optimism and color. In restrained moments, such as the adagio, it is almost impressionistic; its magnificent finale, on the other hand, clearly reflects the influence of modernism, but with a number of folk elements. Making this symphony known to a wider audience is a truly noble undertaking.

Well over 100 different recordings on record and CD

A discographic history of Jon Lord’s “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”

Karsten Eckold

One of the most famous attempts to combine rock and classical music is the legendary “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”. On September 24, 1969, the piece was performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London by the rock band Deep Purple (Jon Lord, Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore, Roger Glover, and Ian Paice) and London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Arnold. The work – Deep Purple’s first live album – was first released on vinyl in the US in December 1969 (Tetragrammaton) and in the UK in January 1970 (Harvest). These releases contained only the three-movement “Concerto”, with the second movement divided in two. Copies of the original US recordings are rare because Tetragrammaton went bankrupt mid-release.

Alongside the Concerto itself (and an encore from it), the original 1969 program also included Symphony No. 6 by Malcolm Arnold and the Deep Purple numbers “Hush” and “Wring That Neck”, as well as the ten-minute “Child In Time”, which had been written especially for the concert. The protest song against the Vietnam War is probably one of the most famous numbers in rock music history. Wikipedia even writes that in the 1970s and 1980s it was considered the unofficial anthem of the Eastern European freedom and resistance movement. In 1970, the studio version of “Child In Time” featured in the album “Deep Purple in Rock”.

On August 25, 1970, the Concerto was performed again, this time at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Lawrence Foster. Remarkably, the scores were subsequently lost. It was not until the mid-1990s that the Dutch composer Marco de Goeij then set about reconstructing the work note-by-note on the basis of sound recordings and film footage. When Deep Purple performed in the Netherlands in 1997, de Goeij presented his work to Jon Lord. Deep Purple finally recorded the work to the “new” score with the London Symphony Orchestra at London’s Royal Albert Hall on September 25 and 26, 1999, and later performed it several times in concert with various other orchestras.

The portal “Discogs” lists 126 recordings of the Concerto, released on vinyl, CD, and DVD all over the world since 1969. For example, a remix was released in 2002 as a double CD (“Intro”, “Hush”, “Wring That Neck”, and “Child In Time” on CD 1 and the Concerto on CD 2). A music video/DVD with a TV recording from 1970 was released on May 6, 2003.

In 2012, the first studio version of the Concerto was released, with Paul Mann conducting the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Instead of Deep Purple, famous guest musicians came to the famous Abbey Road Studios in London to play the rock parts. Among them were Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden, vocals), Steve Morse (Deep Purple, guitar), Joe Bonamassa (guitar), and Guy Pratt (Pink Floyd, bass).

Jon Lord passed away in London on July 16, 2012 at the age of 71. He was there at the studio and involved in the mixing right up to the end. The project was completed just a few days before his death.

On August 8, 2014, Warner Music reissued the concert recording of the “Concerto for Group and Orchestra”. The recording is on three LPs – the first time the complete program of that London concert on September 24, 1969 has been available on vinyl. It comes with a fascinating 16-page booklet.

This article appeared in the Dresdner Universitätsjournal (university newspaper, UJ) 10/2018 of May 29, 2018. The complete issue is available as a free PDF download here. Printed copies and PDF files of the university newspaper can be ordered from  . For more information, please visit universitaetsjournal.de.