Detlev Glanert a appris la trompette, le cor ténor, la contrebasse et le piano. De 1980 à 1982, il étudie la composition avec Diether de la Motte à Hambourg, puis se forme avec Hans Werner Henze à Cologne (1985-1989). À l'été 1986, il entreprend des études complémentaires avec Oliver Knussen à Tanglewood. Pendant 10 ans, Detlev Glanert a vécu en Italie, où il a dirigé l'Istituto di Musica et la Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte à Montepulciano en tant que directeur artistique. En 1992-1993, il obtient une bourse de l'institut d'art allemand Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo à Rome. En 2003, il est compositeur en résidence à Mannheim et occupe le même poste au Pacific Music Festival de Sapporo en 2005. Il donne des conférences et enseigne la composition notamment à Aspen, Gênes, Montepulciano, Melbourne, Jakarta et Sapporo. Detlev Glanert vit à Berlin.
Ses oeuvres ont été interprétée par - entre autres - l'Orchestre philharmonique de Vienne, le Gewandhausorchester de Leipzig, l'Orchestre philharmonique de Berlin et de Munich, l'Orchestre royal du Concertgebouw, l'Orchestre philharmonique tchèque, l'Orchestre de Philadelphie, l'Orchestre symphonique de Toronto, l'Orchestra del Teatro Regio, l'Orchestre National de France, le WDR Symphony Orchestra.
L'œuvre instrumentale de Detlev Glanert comprend quatre symphonies, des concertos solos pour piano, duo avec piano, violon, harpe, trompette et tuba, et de nombreuses pièces pour orchestre et ensembles de musique de chambre. Les 11 pièces de théâtre musical de Glanert ont toutes été mises en scène et jouées à plusieurs reprises. Il a reçu plusieurs prix pour ses opéras, dont le prestigieux prix Rolf Liebermann en 1993 pour Le miroir du grand empereur et le Prix du théâtre bavarois en 2001 pour l'opéra comique Jest, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning. Pour son opéra Océane, il a reçu en 2021 l'Oper!Award et en 2020 l'OPUS Klassik en tant que “compositeur de l'année“.
Les chefs d'orchestre de sa musique incluent Marin Alsop, Stefan Asbury, Martyn Brabbins, Semyon Bychkov, Stéphane Denève, Iván Fischer, Oliver Knussen, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Jun Märkl, Andrew Manze, Kent Nagano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, David Robertson, Donald Runnicles, Markus Stenz et Christian Thielemann.
Au cours de la saison 2021-22, deux nouvelles productions d'opéra sont présentées : Caligula au Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar et Oceane au Stadttheater Bremerhaven. Les temps forts de la saison sont la première mondiale du Concerto pour violon n° 2 avec Midori et le Royal Scottish National Orchestra sous la direction de Thomas Søndergård à Édimbourg, suivie d'une première allemande avec le NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra sous la direction de Brad Lubman à l'Elbphilharmonie Hamburg ainsi que Four Preludes et Serious Songs avec Thomas Hampson et l'Orchestre National de Lyon sous la direction de Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider. Son œuvre orchestrale Weites Land est interprétée à la NDR Radiophilharmonie de Hanovre et au San Antonio Symphony sous la direction de Ruth Reinhardt.
En 2022-23, d'autres créations sont programmées par la Philharmonie tchèque, Symphonie n° 4, Symphonie de Prague et au Semperoper Dresden, La juive de Tolède.
Detlev Glanert, interview with David Kettle, RSNO
Your Violin Concerto No. 2 is obviously connected with Beethoven’s famous letters to his ‘Immortal Beloved’. What’s been your own relationship with Beethoven and his music? Do you feel you’ve taken inspiration from him and his works? What kind of impact do you feel his music has had on the way you approach creating music yourself?
Of course Beethoven is a center point of education in classical music. His unbelievable invention of gestures and textures goes along with the most scrupulous thematic work – this is indeed somewhat to learn for everybody, also for me. His perfect balance between popular music and revolutionary invention is one of my models, and was perhaps never reached again in this quality.
What’s your particular interest in these letters that he wrote to his ‘Immortal Beloved’? There’s obviously lots of speculation and research into who the recipient was intended to be – how significant is knowing that, do you think? What do you feel they show about Beethoven the man?
- Obviously Beethoven was emotional very connected to the addressed person he finds very tender words and makes a self description of his emotional state and what happened to him these days – but it is not significant for me to know the addressed person, not even Beethoven as a man. It is quite more interesting, that he uses words like music notes and motifs, he creates tension and development like in his scores. To read the letter today is still very touching, there is something in it, what also people from today can think or say.
There are clearly direct connections between the Concerto and the famous letters, and its three movements correspond with the three sections or time periods in which Beethoven wrote. Could you tell me a little about those connections? To what extent does the music evoke or reflect the specific writing, themes and ideas of the letters?
I tried to translate Beethovens “composed” letter in a free way into my own music, mainly with two different sound complexes: on is attached to all self descriptions connected to the real world, the other to the emotional and personal level. It never becomes programmatically music in the sense of Strauss, it is more the starting (jumping) point for my own composing fantasy. If we read the letter carefully between the lines, it is a big “adieux” to the beloved one, and the ending is perhaps the most personal and moving goodbye ever written.
Why do you think the letters have found musical connections in the form of a violin concerto?
It is interesting to see, that some motifs (the post coach, the weather, the future, the “you”) are going through the letter like themes of a large Beethoven orchestral work. Individual evocation is combined with more general situations, in a big and constant rhetoric flow, sometimes like counterpoints. It is constructed like a piece of him. That brought me to the plan to read the letter like an imagined score of a piece of my own music.
What connections do you feel the violin has to Beethoven in general, and to these letters? Would it be too simplistic to see the violin soloist as playing a role, either as Beethoven writing the letters or the ‘Immortal Beloved’ receiving them, or as the intended recipient, or even as Beethoven’s imagined idea of his recipient?
The solo violin represents the individual level, it can be Beethoven, and, or the beloved lady. It can change roles, following the context. But it is embedded into “circumstances” (Beethoven would say “Schicksal”), and both beings are connected in conflicts and unities. The violin is a breathing instrument, and is for my needs quite more adapted as a – let’s say – solo piano, what would be quite too much Beethoven like and dominating. The big model is of course his violin concerto.
Have you used or referred to any music by Beethoven in the Concerto itself, either as direct quotation or more 'hidden' within the score? Or did you look to any particular pieces by Beethoven as more general models?
There is a quotation from Beethovens scetch book, a thematic cell, what he never used. But I prefer to leave it hidden.