from "Guntram"
Prelude to Act II
Kaleidoskop
Ein Heldenleben
At the Richard Strauss Days, we encounter the works of Strauss programmatically embedded in the context of German high and late romantic music. You will also get to know the composer Heinrich G. Noren, who spent the last years of his life at Tegernsee and referred to Richard Strauss in his work.
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Rémy BallotThe Paris-born violinist and conductor Rémy Ballot is “Conductor in Residence” at the Richard Strauss Festival. He was the last pupil of Sergiu Celibidache, whom he met at the age of 16. After the death of his teacher, Rémy Ballot founded his own orchestra in Paris, which he conducted for five years. He studied violin with Gérard Poulet at the Paris Conservatoire and received further musical inspiration from Ivry Gitlis.
Since 2011, Rémy Ballot has established himself internationally with his interpretations of Bruckner’s symphonies. Considered by some to be the best Bruckner conductor of his generation, his live recordings of all Bruckner symphonies as part of the Bruckner Festival St. Florian serve as reference recordings and have won numerous awards, including the Diapason d’or Découverte, four times the Supersonic Prize of the online magazine Pizzicato and several nominations for ICMA (International Classical Music Awards) and Grammy.
In his work with the orchestra “Klangkollektiv Wien”, which he founded together with the clarinettist and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra member Norbert Täubl, he is breaking new ground in exploring the repertoire of the First Viennese School. The inaugural concert with works by Haydn, Webern and Schubert was enthusiastically received by the Viennese and German press. This collaboration has also resulted in numerous CDs, which have met with a unanimous, in some cases hymnic, response from specialist critics. In the 2022/23 season, Ballot made his debut with Klangkollektiv Wien at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and the Prinzregententheater in Munich. He has been Conductor in Residence at the Richard Strauss Festival since 2024.
Rémy Ballot is also in demand internationally as an orchestra teacher. He works with orchestras in Spain, Albania, Croatia, Japan and Israel, where he was involved in founding the FYMO – Filasteen Young Musicians Orchestra – of the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Ramallah and with which he toured Palestine and Jordan. In 2019 and 2022 he conducted the National Orchestra of Cuba and the Lyceum Mozartiano de la Habana in Cuba in a series of concerts. He has also worked with the Orchestre National Philharmonique des Pays de la Loire, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Vienna State Opera Stage Orchestra, the Ossiach Academy Orchestra and the Salzburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
In parallel to his work as a conductor, he continues his activity as Primarius of the Ballot Quartet/Quintet. In 2020, his CD recording of Bruckner’s String Quartet and String Quintet was praised in extensive reviews in the magazines Diapason and Crescendo and on the ORF radio station Ö1 as new reference recordings. He also won the Supersonic Prize for this CD and was nominated for the ICMA.
Pilsner PhilharmonieThe Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra, successor to the Pilsen Radio Orchestra, is an orchestra with a remarkable history and cultural tradition. Over the years, it has developed into an important orchestra whose art of interpretation is appreciated internationally. Its artistic achievements are a flagship not only for the city of Pilsen and the region, but for the entire Czech Republic. After the Second World War, the important era of symphonic music in Pilsen was closely linked to the Pilsen Radio Orchestra, which has given countless performances at home and abroad since 1946 and, as the name suggests, made important recordings and live radio broadcasts. The orchestra’s direction has been shaped by strong personalities such as conductors Josef Hrnčíř, Antonín Devátý, Josef Blacký, Martin Turnovský, Bohumír Liška and many others. The orchestra undertakes numerous tours abroad and performs on renowned stages throughout Europe and the USA. These include the Philharmonie im Gasteig Munich, the Liederhalle Stuttgart, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Brucknerhaus Linz, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Tonhalle Zurich and the Dvořák Hall in Prague’s Rudolfinum. In August 2017, the orchestra performed in the new Elbphilharmonie concert hall in Hamburg.
Plans for 2024 include another appearance at the Richard Strauss Festival in Garmisch-Partenkirchen as well as projects in connection with the anniversaries of Bedřich Smetana (e.g. Engadin Festival St. Moritz, Festival Europäische Wochen Passau, Konzerthaus Dortmund) and Anton Bruckner (Brixen Cathedral, Schaffhausen). In recent seasons, a number of outstanding instrumentalists and singers have performed with the Pilsen Philharmonic, including Xavier de Maistre, Gautier Capuçon, Sergej Nakarjakov, Daniel Müller-Schott, Lilya Zilberstein, Tai Murray, Pascal Roge, Juliane Banse, Thomas Oliemans, Dimitri Ashkenazy, Jeremy Menuhin, Louis Schwitzgebel and Andrea Bocelli. Important guests in the past have included Ramon Vargas, Montserrat Caballé and a number of important conductors such as Sir Charles Mackerras, Václav Talich, Libor Pešek and Jiří Bělohlávek. The orchestra regularly records for Czech Radio and continues the tradition of the years 1946 – 1993 (Pilsen Radio Orchestra). For other labels, it recently recorded Bohuslav Martinů’s opera The Good Day, which won several prestigious awards. In addition, Antonín Dvořák’s “Rhapsody” or Bohuslav Martinů’s “Complete Works for Cello and Orchestra” (Petr Nouzovský and Tomáš Brauner), which was published by Dabringhaus and Grimm and won the “Classic Prague Awards” in the “Recording of the Year” category in 2017.
The latest news are CDs released by the German agency Ars Produktion: a CD with soprano Karolína Janů or a CD with compositions by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (Alban Beikircher & Chuhei Iwasaki), which was nominated for the highly prestigious Opus Klassik award. Chief conductor since 2021 is Chuhei Iwasaki, the permanent guest conductor since 2023/24 is Jan Schultsz. The Pilsen Philharmonic has been organizing the “Smetana Days” festival since 2013.
