PANG Ka-Pang
Artistic Director and Principal Conductor

PANG Ka-Pang studied in Beijing and in Vienna and leads the Suzhou Chinese Orchestra. It has been founded five years ago, the orchestra combines traditional Chinese music with modern music under his direction. PANG Ka-Pang commissions young composers to write new symphonic compositions for the orchestra with the unique instrumentation of traditional Chinese and Western classical instruments. With the special timbre of modern interpretations, he wins the hearts of Chinese audiences and is now conquering Western audiences on an international tour.

In 2021, PANG Ka-Pang was awarded a special prize for “International music and cultural commitment” by the jury and the presidium of the Austrian Music Theatre Prize.

Suzhou Chinese Orchestra

In Suzhou, "Venice of Southeast China", a city criss-crossed by canals and with a history of several thousand years, one encounters artfully laid out traditional parks in the midst of modern building ensembles.

It was in this picturesque setting that the Suzhou Chinese Orchestra was founded five years ago. In their own concert hall, the young musicians, with an average age of less than 30, create entirely new and unheard-of timbres of classical music through the interplay of traditional Chinese instruments and instruments of Western classical music. With this unusual approach, they win the hearts of young Chinese audiences.

In 2021, the Suzhou Chinese Orchestra was awarded the special prize of the Austrian Music Theatre Prize for “International Orchestra”.

2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Trieste Pinko Tomažič Partisan Choir. The choir will celebrate this important event under the baton of conductor Pia Cah with a special concert at Cankarjev dom on the Day of the Uprising Against the Occupation, a national holiday celebrated in Slovenia on 27 April.

The Trieste Pinko Tomažič Partisan Choir was founded in 1972 in Bazovica/Basovizza near Trieste on the initiative of former partisans. The main mission of the choir is to keep alive the tradition of the National Liberation War and resistance movement, to preserve partisan and resistance songs and promote ideals of peace, brotherhood, unity, comradery, tolerance, equality of nations and acceptance of diversity in a world without borders.

Sukhishvili is a legendary ensemble that has retained the traditions of authentic Georgian dance for over 75 years. Impressive choreography, bright costumes, hot passion, and an orchestra with unique instruments, whose sounds tell the musical history of Georgia on the stage.

The thrilling story of Prince Siegfried and his love for Princess Odette, who was turned into a swan by the evil sorcerer Rothbart, has been enthralling audiences for almost a century and a half. All the beauty and drama of an authentic romantic ballet, the virtuoso double female lead role of Odette/Odile, the combination of the sublime music of P.I.
Tchaikovsky and the luxury of dance invite you into the magical world of lakes, forests, palaces and eternal love, thus appealing to all generations.

The ultimate white ballet will be performed by the ballet ensemble Ukrainian Classical Ballet, an internationally acclaimed dance company comprised of first-class dancers, soloists and champions of Ukrainian and European national theatres. The ensemble is dedicated to preserving the tradition of classical ballet and constantly exploring modern
dance elements, creating a fascinating balance with the perfection of their lines and choreography. Despite the difficult conditions related to the COVID 19 virus restrictions and the beginning of Russian aggression, they managed to perform 90 shows across Italy, Slovakia, Croatia, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway in the 2021/22 season.

Ukrainian Classical Ballet recreates key works of the classical ballet with unique mastery. In each of the performances, their main motivation is to uphold the tradition of ballet art, making them a real feast for the eyes due to the charm of their costumes and luxurious scenography.

Support Ukrainian artists and secure your seat for a magical evening of dance and music

One of the most popular singers in the region, Sergej Ćetković, will perform in Ljubljana for the first time. The musician and singer-songwriter, who has been on the scene for more than twenty years, is preparing a romantic spectacle for Women's Day.

Ćetković has so far released six studio albums and three compilations, and in 2014 he performed at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Moj svijet, and to this day is the only representative of Montenegro to reach the finals of this competition.

The Tönkunstler Orchestra is the alternative Golden Subscription Concert 6 (replacing Nederlands Kamerkoor and HERMESensemble), scheduled for 6 June 2023. The tickets remain valid for the new date (no changes necessary). Further information: vstopnice@cd-cc.si and katja.novak@cd-cc.si.

Programme:
Joseph Haydn, Symphony No. 90 in C Major, Hob. I:90 
Anton Bruckner, Symphony No. 6 in A Major, WAB 106

Anton Bruckner once said that the Symphony No. 6 was his “cheekiest” symphony. The shortest, snappiest, shiniest of his major mature symphonies, it features Bruckner’s masterful play with light and dark, radiant A major clouded with elements of the Phrygian mode. Haydn’s Symphony No. 90 is another “cheeky” work – in its contrasts of major and minor. 

With its residencies at the Musikverein Wien, Festspielhaus St. Pölten and at the Grafenegg summer festival, the Tonkünstler Orchestra is one of Austria’s major and most important musical ambassadors. Their traditional Sunday Afternoon concerts at the Wiener Musikverein go back more than seventy years and remain their most successful concert series to date. Yutaka Sado, one of the most important Japanese conductors of our time, has been the orchestra’s Music Director since the 2015/16 season; the focus of the orchestra’s artistic work is traditional orchestral repertoire, ranging from the Classical period to the twentieth-century works. 

The concurrent artistic careers of G. Ligeti and J. Beuys have instilled a desire in Vollmaier for cooperation and new creation inspired by their artistic outputs.
On the one hand, this was Ligeti's "extreme electronic" approach to the acoustic instrument and, on the other hand, Beuys' concept of tearing down the wall between life and art. 
After major piano solo projects, Vollmaier: Kind of Laibach and Vollmaier: Nietzsche, the pianist embarked on a new venture: the piano compositions by composer G. Ligeti, to be performed in Cankarjev dom’s Gallus Hall on the centenary of the composer’s birth. Three Ligeti’s piano compositions have been selected. Vollmaier will perform two variations on each composition, using both contemporary and classical musical techniques to create a sonically and visually enhanced acoustic/electronic performance art. An event for the listeners and spectators alike whose core is made up of both the piano tone and the interpreter.
The performance has been visually supported by Things I Miss and Komposter, whose expression serves to extend Vollmaier's sound. 
Producer and composer Luka Jamnik, who has collaborated with Vollmaier on his previous projects, will modify the sound of the piano tone from the control room. 
Together, they have created a new, personal performance event with darkness, silence, noise, astonishment and seclusion as its leitmotifs. 
The concert will be accompanied by an album released on Nika Records in co-production with Cankarjev dom.
 
Joseph Beuys sought and established an unspoken connection with his audiences, but unlike many artists he did not wish to give clear and rational form to the meaning of his ritual performances – social sculptures. In his famous 1965 solo performance, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt), he moved for three hours through a gallery inaudibly explaining paintings and art to the carcass of a hare, while the audience watched the performance from behind a glass wall. This ritual of "explaining art" was accompanied by an act that was truly silent to the viewers. Beuys’ philosophy behind this performance stemmed from the contempt for the rational society and rational thinking. According to Beuys, even a dead animal, a dead hare ‘preserves more powers of intuition than some human beings with their stubborn rationality' and intellectualized perception of the world and art. Beuys wanted the audience to reach the conclusion that artistic performance (and concert performance) concerned the spiritual connection between death and humanity and the invisible energies that inherently guide nature and our lives. The work was not intended for the viewers to reflect on and seek to understand mentally, but sense it intuitively with the kind of natural instinct that a hare follows when it burrows itself into earth and makes a home for itself.

Beuys and Ligeti were acquaintances, if not friends, contemporaries, if not collaborators, who respected each other and who, in some sense, used the same mode of thought about aesthetics and the aesthetic function of art, each in his own medium. 
Nevertheless, their mediums partially overlapped; Beuys, who was a master and pioneer of performance art, started using sound and music. In 1963, Beuys organised the first Festum Fluxorum Fluxus in Düsseldorf, and invited Ligeti to take part in the festival. Beuys’ sound performances were from then on explicitly referred to as “concerts”, and no longer as artistic actions. Ligeti’s music, however, progressively evolved into performance art, and his concerts gradually radicalized this aspect. 

To put it very simply, their way of thinking basically concerns the fact that music is not merely about composing sound and that a concert is not just about playing an instrument (it's about the very act of performance) and that – in Beuys' case – the performance is not just a live spatial installation exploring the ideology and perception of art, but – primarily in Cagean sense – can also be music or a concert. Both are essentially concerned with social interaction, social sculpture, a ritual whose key element is the audience and its perception, its response. The performer simply plays the role of an interpreter, a mediator, shaman or master of ceremonies (MC), but it is the audience that (can) lend substance to a performance (or not) through intuition. If the audience is dead, like the famous Beuys’ hare, then this fear is unfounded.

Soloists: Alexandra Oomens, soprano; Hilary Summers, alto; Joshua Ellicott, tenor; Edward Grint, bass 

Programme: George F. Handel, Messiah, oratorio, HWV 56  

The famous oratorio Messiah by George Friedrich Handel, selected for our December Golden Subscription concert, creates a lavish and festive atmosphere. Although not originally intended for performance during the Advent period, it is a work strongly tied to Christmas and its mood of sheer elation renders the oratorio a favourite choice for the festive season. The premiere in the spring of 1742 received raving reviews, and a Dublin newspaper wrote: 
“The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.”

The oratorio will be performed by The King's Consort, one of Europe's leading period instrument orchestras. The Orchestra and Choir were founded in 1980 by the English conductor and harpsichordist Robert King. Over a history spanning more than four decades, The Consort has toured extensively in almost every country in EU and made over 100 award-winning recordings. The Orchestra and the Choir will be joined by soloists Alexandra Oomens, Hilary Summers, Joshua Ellicott and Edward Grint.