Daniel Hope & the Zurich Chamber Orchestra inflamed the crowd of the Tonhalle

“Hope and Friends” new Series debuts brilliantly.

Last night Daniel Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, opened the new season of the Tonhalle Maag. For 2 hours in front of over 1000 people, the 21 musicians, for most dressed in black suits/tuxedos or red gala dresses, were able to deeply touch the audience, playing classical music in a new way by bringing musicians and audience closer together than never before.

After three years of long hours playing, talking and trying different concert ways, they developed the new series “Hope and Friends.” The goal says Hope, the director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, was to figure out “how we can listen to familiar music in new contexts.”

They got their answer and last night was the first successful evening of the series.

Hope showed he is not only a talented and brillant violinist but also an excellent entertainer. In between each pieces of music he explained interesting facts and funny anectodes about the composers. 

The first concert of the new season started with a lively piece of music, a suite for string orchestra of contemporary British composer John Rutter. Rutter composed it in 2003 and it is based on British folk melodies. Hope said jokingly it is a good idea to start with something positive about England at the moment. For whose of you not familiar with Rutter, he is known for his choir compositions and he lately composed music for the wedding of Prince William and Cate Middleton. Hope and John Rutter went to the same school in England.

Then came the Adagio and Fugue in C minor KV 546 of Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This piece was composed in Vienna in 1788 and one can only recognize it is Mozart just at the end, mentioned Hope.  Afterward Hope played the solist’s part in Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in D minor. The German composer, known to be one of the best composers of the Romantic era, wrote the piece when he was 13 years old. Hope said that in that piece you can already see how creative he is despite his young age. He added that Mendelsohn was a genius, composing and being super talented already with 6. He was Goethe´s favorite musician. Mendelssohn unfortunately stayed in the shadow of Mozart.

After the break the musicians continued with the energetic string serenade in C Major op 48 of 19th century Russian composer, Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, an hommage to Mozart. Then followed an hommage to legend jazz composer George Gershwin with “I got rhythm.” Hope said amused they will try their best performing it even if they haven´t drunken whiskey as Gershwin.  The last composer of the evening was once more Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

At the end there was a long well-deserved ovation for all musicians. The audience was invited in the hall for drinks while Daniel Hope signed autographs of his numerous books and CDs. 

This upcoming December and in January, February and June of next year there will be other concerts of “Hope and Friends” at the Tonhalle Maag. The soloists for these evenings accompanying the music director will be Lynn Harrell, Maxim Lando, Marc Lachat and Stéphane Réty. 

Daniel Hope and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra will be very busy until next June. They started a tour with 71 dates. The tour started last night in Switzerland at the theater in Chur and will end in Zurich on June 23rd, 2020. The tour is going mainly to the USA and Germany but also in the UK and in France.

Daniel Hope together with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra recorded a new CD on sale now called DANIEL HOPE ZURICH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA JOURNEY TO MOZART

About Daniel Hope:

“The violinist Daniel Hope has toured the world as a virtuoso soloist for 25 years and is celebrated for his musical versatility as well as his dedication to humanitarian causes. Winner of the 2015 European Cultural Prize for Music, whose previous recipients include Daniel Barenboim, Plácido Domingo and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniel Hope appears as soloist with the world’s major orchestras and conductors, also directing many ensembles from the violin. Since the start of the 2016/17 season, Daniel Hope is Music Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra – an orchestra with whom he is closely associated since his early childhood. In early October 2017, the documentary film “Daniel Hope – The Sound of Life” was screened in European Movie Theatres.

Daniel Hope was raised in London and studied the violin with Zakhar Bron. The youngest ever member of the Beaux Arts Trio during its final six seasons, today Daniel Hope performs at all the world’s greatest halls and festivals: from Carnegie Hall to the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, from Salzburg to Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (where he was Artistic Director from 2009-2013) and from Aspen to the BBC Proms and Tanglewood. He has worked with conductors including Kurt Masur, Thomas Hengelbrock and Christian Thielemann, as well as with the world’s greatest symphony orchestras including Boston, Chicago, Berlin, Paris, London, Los Angeles and Tokyo.

Devoted to contemporary music, Hope has commissioned over thirty works, enjoying close contact with composers such as Alfred Schnittke, Toru Takemitsu, Harrison Birtwistle, Sofia Gubaidulina, György Kurtág, Peter Maxwel-Davies and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Daniel Hope is one of the world’s most prolific classical recording artists, with over 25 albums to his name. His recordings have won the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis, the Diapason d’Or of the Year, the Edison Classical Award, the Prix Caecilia, seven ECHO-Klassik Awards and numerous Grammy nominations. His album of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto and Octet with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe was named one of the best of the year by the New York Times. His recording of Alban Berg’s Concerto was voted Gramophone Magazine’s “top choice of all available recordings“. His recording of Max Richter’s Vivaldi Recomposed, which reached No. 1 in over 22 countries is, with 160,000 copies sold, one of the most successful classical recordings of recent times. Hope has been an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist since 2007.

Daniel Hope has penned four bestselling books published in Germany by the Rowohlt publishing company. He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal and has written scripts for collaborative performances with the actors Klaus Maria Brandauer, Sebastian Koch and Mia Farrow. In Germany he also presents a weekly radio show for the WDR3 Channel and curates, since the 2016/17 season his own series “Hope@9pm”, a music and discussion event with well known guests from culture and politics at the Konzerthaus Berlin. Since 2004 Hope has been Associate Artistic Director of the Savannah Music Festival. From 2018/19 he will begin a new role as “Music Director” of the New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco, being related to the orchestra since 2017 as „Artistic Partner“ directing the Ensemble from the violin. In 2019 he will also start his new position as „Artistic Director“ of the Frauenkirche Dresden Daniel Hope plays the 1742 “ex-Lipiński” Guarneri del Gesù, placed generously at his disposal by an anonymous family from Germany. He lives with his family in Berlin.” From his biography on Daniel Hope.com

For more check out this video.

• classical music
• Daniel Hope
• Hope and Friends
• Journey to Mozart
• Tonhalle Maag
• violinist
• Zurich Chamber Orchestra