NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Julia Bullock / Alan Gilbert

In the composer’s own lifetime, Richard Strauss’s opera »Der Rosenkavalier« was already such a success that he compiled a »best of« for orchestra. The work’s popularity comes not least from the many waltzes, which always have a hint of irony about them. After a short and impressionistic burst of spring fever in Lili Boulanger’s »D’un matin de printemps«, her countryman Maurice Ravel throws the Viennese waltz into chaos in his dark »La valse«.

Julia Bullock makes her Elbphilharmonie debut in this concert. Like Alan Gilbert, the singer, curator and activist comes from the USA, where she made her first appearance under his baton with the New York Philharmonic in 2015. The magazine Musical America voted the exceptional soprano its Artist of the Year 2021, describing her as »an agent of change«. Tonight she performs American songs by Margaret Bonds and George Gershwin.