Berlin Youth Orchestra

Although the first concert of the Berlin Youth Orchestra, also known as the Landesjugendorchester Berlin, took place more than 30 years ago in 1987, this tensemble is invariably characterized by youth. LJO (Landesjugendorchester) is a project bringing together young and even teenage performers – winners of the "Jugend musiziert" music competition and other talented instrumentalists between the ages of 14 and 21. Every year the distinguished musicians meet twice for about ten days of rehearsals with an experienced conductor, and the whole project is crowned with a series of concerts.

The Berlin orchestra, under the direction of conductor Michaël Cousteau from France, will perform works from a circle of German and French composers belonging to the canon of orchestral music. All selected compositions represent a variety of orchestral possibilities, to commence with the Egmont overture by Ludwig van Beethoven created at the turn of classicism and romanticism, originally written as theater music for the drama by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The German romanticism will also be represented by the most famous non-operative piece by Richard Wagner "Wesendonck Lieder", a series of songs to words by Mathilde Wesendonck. The monumental, almost pathetic, symphonic music rooted in Romantic spirit is also the domain of the well-known French composer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Albéric Magnard, known as the "French Bruckner". His "Hymne à la justice" written in 1902-1903 is a musical commentary moved by the famous case of Alfred Dreyfus.

Two works by the masters from the Seine, Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen, constitut, in turn the opportunity to present a whole range of orchestral colours. The Impressionist Three Nocturnes by Debussy, "Nuages" (Clouds), "Fêtes" (Festivities) and "Sirènes" (Sirens) completed in 1899, by name refer to the quiet "night" miniatures associated, for example, with Chopin's music. Each part is a complex independent composition in which the composer conveys a variety of sensuous impressions described in each title.

"Les Offrandes oubliées" (The Forgotten Victims) is the first public composition of Messiaen, dating from 1930. With the subtitle "Méditation symphonique" (symphonic meditation) it is divided into three links: "La Croix" (Cross), "Le Péché" (Sin), "L'Eucharistie" (Eucharist), inspired by religion – a subject matter so important in this composer's work.