Staatskapelle Weimar / Liszt Fest 2023

Liszt: Weimars Volkslied (Weimar Folk Song)

Liszt: Dante Symphony

Liszt: Sardanapalo – Hungarian premiere

Sardanapalo, King of Assyria: Airam Hernández

Mirra, an Ionian slavegirl: Joyce El-Khoury

Beleso, a priest: Oleksandr Pushniak

Featuring: Staatskapelle Weimar, Women’s Choir of the Hungarian National Choir (choirmaster: Csaba Somos)

Conductor: Kirill Karabits

130 years after the death of a composer, rarely are such works discovered that substantially alter our view of the oeuvre. Ferenc Liszt was a unique composer in this regard as well: the surviving first act of the opera he based on Byron’s tragedy was first performed in Weimar in 2018.

The manuscript of the composition was found at Weimar’s Goethe and Schiller Archive, and David Trippett, a musicologist at the University of Cambridge, thinks the music of Sardanapalo is breath-taking. It reflects the influence of Bellini, Meyerbeer and Wagner, and it combines an Italian lyricism with Liszt’s unmistakably original harmonic vocabulary. Trippett reconstructed the piece from the manuscript, and also wrote an orchestration for it, and this is the version that will be performed in Budapest.

In the first half of their concert, Staatskapelle Weimar will perform one of Liszt’s most important compositions for large orchestra, the Dante Symphony. Standing on the podium will be a luminary of international opera, Kirill Karabits, the principal conductor of Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.