Acclaimed by the Manchester Evening News as “arguably the greatest ensemble of its type in the world,” the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet brings its special talents to the Morrison Artists Series for a concert on Friday, February 28, 2014 at 8:00 PM in San Francisco State University’s McKenna Theater. The concert will be preceded at 7:00 PM by a lecture by the Morrison Artists Series’ Artistic Director Richard Festinger. Both concert and lecture are admission free. The program will present a broad range of music for woodwind quintet, including Mozart’s Fantasy for Mechanical Organ, K. 608 (arranged by Michael Hasel); Kalevi Aho’s Windquintet (2006); Darius Milhaud’s La cheminée du roi René (1939); and Carl Nielsen’s Quintet in A major, Op. 43 (1922).
The Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet (Philharmonisches Bläserquintett Berlin) was founded in 1988, during the era of Herbert von Karajan, the first permanently established wind quintet in the famous orchestra's rich tradition of chamber music. The members are living musical witnesses to the hugely productive and influential musical partnerships of the Berlin Philharmonic not only with Karajan, but also with its two most recent Musical Directors: Claudio Abbado and Sir Simon Rattle. Naturally, as members of the Berlin Philharmonic, they have also enjoyed important collaborations with every other major conductor of their times, Leonard Bernstein, Carlos Kleiber, Sir John Barbirolli, Günter Wand, Carlo Maria Giulini, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Pièrre Boulez, James Levine and Daniel Barenboim, to name only a few.
The Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet continues to astonish audiences worldwide with their range of expression, their tonal spectrum and their conceptual unity. Indeed many listeners and critics agree that the ensemble has succeeded in virtually redefining the sound of the classic wind quintet. Their repertoire covers not only the entire spectrum of the wind quintet literature but also
includes works for enlarged ensemble, including the Sextets of Janáček and Reinecke, and the septets of Hindemith and Koechlin.
In addition to their concert appearances throughout Europe, North and South America, Israel, Australia and the Far East, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet are also popular guests at international festivals such as the Berliner Festwochen, the Edinburgh Festival, the London Proms, the Quintette-Biennale Marseille, the Rheingau Festival and the Salzburg Festival. Their television productions and radio broadcasts are seen and heard throughout Europe, Asia and North America.
In addition to the 8:00 PM concert, the Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet will present a master class on February 28 at noon in Knuth Hall at San Francisco State, which will also be free and open to the public.
Admission to the concert is free, but tickets are required.
Richard Aldag, 415-290-4174, rjaldag@gmail.com