21/08/2025
Festival of Young Artists: Bayreuth experiences a world premiere – Bayreuth –
Nordbayerischer Kurier
Bayreuth experiences a world premiere
Otto Lapp • 13.08.2025 – 5:30 p.m.
Rarely performed, never performed, and world-famous. These were the three categories of the concert in the Ordenskirche St. Georgen. Among them, two world stars.
The Ordenskirche was filled to capacity for the concert within the Festival of Young Artists. Photo: Olga Gassan
Normally, young artists are on stage and in the focus of attention. The concert evening under the motto “Sunken Treasures” had nothing to do with youth – but that was intentional. Forgotten masterpieces were on the programme in the Ordenskirche. And indeed, the works were rather unknown because they are rarely performed: the second movement from a string sextet by Antonín Dvořák. The Prayer of St. Gregory, a work by the Armenian-American composer Alan Hovhaness, is almost popular in comparison. For organ and trumpet, it depicts the patron saint of the Apostolic Church in Armenia. Also for organ and trumpet, but less well known: the Adagio by Juraj Filas, a contemporary Czech composer who passed away in 2021. Overall, the programme was very brass-heavy – the ideal stage for superstar number one: trumpeter Otto Sauter.
More precisely: the piccolo trumpeter. He is regarded as one of the leading trumpet soloists worldwide and is the specialist on the much smaller and more difficult piccolo trumpet. Of course, Sauter also took part in the Concerto for Seven Trumpets by Johann Ernst Altenburg. Much more familiar was the Wedding March from Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin. However, not for quiet humming along, since the entire piece had been arranged for brass by Charles Stine. Presented – and here the festival did become rather young again – by the World Brass Association Student Trumpet Ensemble. But even here the rule applied: rarely performed.
Never before performed, however, was Hver, a work by Prof. Fredrik Schwenk. He is the new artistic director of the Festival of Young Artists, comes from Munich, and is professor of music theory and composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre. He composed it especially for the 75th anniversary of the Festival. At the premiere in Bayreuth Schwenk himself conducted (“I am not really a conductor”) – and with soprano Camilla Nylund another superstar of the classical music scene stood on stage. She was invited because, in her youth, she had been a guest at the Festival of Young Artists – and now she sings on the great stages of the world, including the Bayreuth Festival Theatre. Currently, she is performing as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde.
Schwenk’s work was by far the most difficult of the evening to grasp musically. He wanted, he said afterwards in conversation with this newspaper, to find his own musical language. For him it was not about the experimental side of modern music. Nevertheless, Hver should be recognisable as a composition of its time. What made it more accessible – a clever idea of the organisers – was the printed text of the work, which the composer had compiled from the cycle Hver by the Icelandic author Johann Jonsson. In Hver (“Where?”), existential questions are raised. “Where have the days of your life lost their colour?” it says. And where did Schwenk find so much sadness that resonates in his work? He said he is able to allow feelings, and at the end of the text hope can also be discerned. Hver also became more accessible because it was sung by Nylund, a genuine superstar. The performance was thereby “crowned,” as Festival Director Sissy Thammer remarked in her introduction. Also participating were other musicians from the Festival Orchestra.
https://www.kurier.de/inhalt.festival-junger-kuenstler-bayreuth-erlebt-eine-urauffuehrung.55c3b8c2-eabe-49aa-ac66-f1fde6e4b694.html
Translated with ChatGPT – for reference only
Selten gespielt, noch nie gespielt und weltberühmt. Das waren die drei Kategorien des Konzerts in der Ordenskirche St. Georgen. Darunter zwei Weltstars.
