Baroque

NEW: Academy Concert

Violinist and conductor Bernhard Forck is a specialist for early music and conducts the DSO concert on January 8 with soprano Anna Prohaska. Together with the members of the DSO's Ferenc Fricsay Academy, he conducted a two-day workshop on historical performance practice in January. The result can be experienced on January 22 at the Alte Pfarrkirche Pankow.

Klaus Mäkelä and Janine Jansen with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Conductor Klaus Mäkelä says that a concert is like a journey through time. The composers featured on this programme were clearly inspired by older music. Robert Schumann had just suffered a nervous breakdown when he wrote his Second Symphony, a work in which he documents his recovery and overtly draws on the music of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven.Benjamin Britten’s music, in which the influence of older English masters is always palpable, is also in dialogue with the past. His Violin Concerto juxtaposes tradition with present-day circumstances: the year was 1939, and the threat of war imminent. With her extraordinary aptitude for capturing mood and atmosphere, violinist Janine Jansen is the perfect interpreter.Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘In Schumann’s music I always feel an aspect of the past, tradition, history. Britten too admired tradition. We make a combination with works from the 17th century by Purcell and Dowland, to prepare the atmosphere of the later works by Britten and Schumann, which contain the past. I think the music benefits from it. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Dowland and Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’

Klaus Mäkelä and Janine Jansen with the Concertgebouw Orchestra

Conductor Klaus Mäkelä says that a concert is like a journey through time. The composers featured on this programme were clearly inspired by older music. Robert Schumann had just suffered a nervous breakdown when he wrote his Second Symphony, a work in which he documents his recovery and overtly draws on the music of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven.Benjamin Britten’s music, in which the influence of older English masters is always palpable, is also in dialogue with the past. His Violin Concerto juxtaposes tradition with present-day circumstances: the year was 1939, and the threat of war imminent. With her extraordinary aptitude for capturing mood and atmosphere, violinist Janine Jansen is the perfect interpreter.Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘In Schumann’s music I always feel an aspect of the past, tradition, history. Britten too admired tradition. We make a combination with works from the 17th century by Purcell and Dowland, to prepare the atmosphere of the later works by Britten and Schumann, which contain the past. I think the music benefits from it. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Dowland and Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’

Concertgebouw Orchestra Annual Gala with Klaus Mäkelä

The Concertgebouw Orchestra presents its festive Annual Gala concert for loyal audience members, friends, and donors. The Annual Gala starts with a reception at 19.30, and the fashionable after-party goes on until midnight.Dress code: black tie.Guests are welcomed to a reception at 19.30, after which they will be ushered into the Main Hall for a uniquely memorable conducted by our artistic partner and future chief conductor, Klaus Mäkelä. Leading violinist Janine Jansen performs as soloist in Britten’s deeply moving Violin Concerto, the work with which she made her Concertgebouw Orchestra debut twenty years ago.The Concerto is preceded on the programme by the royal funeral march by Britten’s predecessor Purcell. Another well-known English lament from long ago opens Schumann’s deceptively sunny Second Symphony. Like Britten’s music, Schumann’s is also in dialogue with the past. Klaus Mäkelä says, ‘A concert is a journey. The cathedral-like, almost sacred atmosphere of Purcell enhances those aspects in Schumann and Britten, putting their works in a different light.’After the concert, you are invited to partake in the tantalising follow-up programmes in the foyers of the Concertgebouw. There will be ample opportunity to mingle with other guests, the conductor, soloists, and choir and orchestra members until midnight.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Cellist*innen des Konzerthausorchesters

What's even more beautiful than a cello? Ten cellos! Chamber music is one of the great joys of life for our orchestra musicians. Here, seven members of our cello group and our orchestra academy come together with their colleague Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who is our current artist in residence, for a musically diverse programme.

HUMANS

Leipzig Ballet, under Rémy Fichet, presents "Humans," a double bill exploring creative and abstract dance narratives. Louis Stiens examines dance's embodiment, its impact on choreography, and Leipzig Ballet's history, linking to Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Sofia Nappi blends ballet, contemporary dance, and performance, exploring Baroque and modern elements with music by Clara Schumann and Henry Purcell, reflecting on femininity across eras.

Julius Asal / Piano Recital

Menahem Pressler was deeply impressed by Julius Asal’s piano playing, describing the sound as uniquely sonorous. He wondered how Asal achieved this and felt the instrument shared a secret with him.

Hadelich / Piemontesi / Music of the masters from the banks of the Seine

Stars up close! Today, Augustin Hadelich is a world-leading violinist who conquers the world's stages and performs with the best orchestras, including the NOSPR. He returns with a chamber programme, in duo with the versatile piano virtuoso Francesco Piemontesi. Their concert, which will be dominated by French music, is designed in a modern way. There is no shortage of the canon of violin music, represented by Franck's striking, emotional, late Romantic sonata and Debussy's subtle, intimate sonata. They are accompanied by a third, wonderfully melodic sonata by Francis Poulenc. Both predecessors will shine through, as Poulenc's sounds focus their qualities like a lens because our perception changes with the context. Old French music (by de Grigny and Rameau) will indicate the roots of the work of the masters from the Seine banks mentioned above. György Kurtág's handful of short musical gestures, meanwhile, will allow us to pause for a moment to take a fresh look at what we already know. Adam Suprynowicz Concert duration (intermission included): approximately 90 minutes

ROBERTA MAMELI, MARGRET KOELL & MICHELE PASOTTI

Roberta Mameli, Margret Koell, and Michele Pasotti—previously heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal as part of various Early Music formations—make their debut as a trio, presenting a musical homage to matters of the heart. In vocal works by composers such as Giulio Caccini, Luigi Rossi, and Barbara Strozzi, the tender interplay of words and sounds reveals the depth and richness of human emotion as it was celebrated in 17th-century music and literature.

HUMANS

Leipzig Ballet, under Rémy Fichet, presents "Humans," a double bill exploring creative and abstract dance narratives. Louis Stiens examines dance's embodiment, its impact on choreography, and Leipzig Ballet's history, linking to Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Sofia Nappi blends ballet, contemporary dance, and performance, exploring Baroque and modern elements with music by Clara Schumann and Henry Purcell, reflecting on femininity across eras.

HUMANS

Leipzig Ballet, under Rémy Fichet, presents "Humans," a double bill exploring creative and abstract dance narratives. Louis Stiens examines dance's embodiment, its impact on choreography, and Leipzig Ballet's history, linking to Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Sofia Nappi blends ballet, contemporary dance, and performance, exploring Baroque and modern elements with music by Clara Schumann and Henry Purcell, reflecting on femininity across eras.

Guest performance

Simply... Philharmonic!3: Max Volbers, Kore Orchestra

Max Volbers, photo: Cezary Zych; Orkiestra Kore, photo: Grzesiek Mart The instrument inevitably associated with Antonio Vivaldi is the violin. This association is natural, since he played exclusively on string instruments and it was to the violin that he entrusted the solo part in the vast majority of his concertos. However, the catalogue of Vivaldi’s complete works also includes solo flute concertos, three of which are specified as being for flautino. It is impossible to be sure exactly which instrument the composer had in mind, but the compass of the Concerto in G major, RV 443 allows it to be performed on sopranino recorder. As with Vivaldi, the most important instrument for Georg Philipp Telemann was the violin. However, he also had experience of playing wind instruments. After the death of his father, he studied keyboard instruments with organist Benedikt Christiani and independently mastered the recorder, violin and zither. Vivaldi’s concertos were certainly familiar to Telemann, but in his 1718 autobiography the German composer indicated that he was not a great admirer of the concerto genre. Telemann’s reservations were probably not so much about the genre itself as about the exaggerated virtuosity. Johann Friedrich Fasch must also have become acquainted with these works during his time in Prague as court composer to Count Wenzel Morzin. Fasch had taught himself composition by studying the works of his friend Telemann, who for Fasch was the greatest master. Simply… Philharmonic! Project 3: Both historical eras and cultural centres are often associated with outstanding individuals who represent the art created in a given place and time. However, confining ourselves to the individual perspective often distorts the full picture of the artistic reality of the time. For Baroque Italy, such a point of reference is certainly Antonio Vivaldi. Although he was an outstanding violinist, he also wrote concertato works not intended for string instruments, as did another violinist, Georg Philipp Telemann, who today remains in the shadow of the great Baroque luminaries from Saxony – Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel. Unlike Vivaldi, Telemann was a multi-instrumentalist, also experienced in playing wind and keyboard instruments. Francesco Landini can be considered a symbol of Florence, and also of the entire Italian output of the Trecento. He too delighted his contemporaries with his performance art, specialising in organ. The most outstanding composer of the Polish Republic of the first half of the fifteenth century known to us today was Nicolaus of Radom. Very little is known about his life, but he can certainly be associated with his activities in early Jagiellonian Cracow. Daniel Laskowski

Viola d’amore

Countertenor Alexander Chance sings Purcell

For lovers of chamber music the Recital Hall is the venue of choice. You can hear the musicians breathe and you can practically touch them. This hall is also cherished by musicians for its beautiful acoustics and direct contact with the audience. In the Recital Hall you can hear the best musicians of our time. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Recital Hall for yourself!

CAROLIN WIDMANN

“Traveler, there is no road. You make your own path as you walk.” Inscribed on the wall of a Spanish monastery, these words were discovered by Luigi Nono in the 1980s and became a kind of motto for his late works. The search for an unattainable music of the future also infuses his penultimate score La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura, composed in 1988–9. Carolin Widmann and the SWR Experimentalstudio bring the piece to the Pierre Boulez Saal. Widmann complements Nono’s meditation on space and sound with works from the 18th and 21st centuries by Telemann, George Benjamin, and Swiss composer Helena Winkelman.

Michael Spyres Il Pomo d'Oro "Tenore assoluto!"

Michael Spyres, an exceptional American tenor, has a vocal range of over three octaves. Praised for his spectacular high notes and rich middle and lower registers, Spyres challenges the historical dominance of castrati. His performance in Essen will showcase his versatility across French and Italian Baroque repertoire, accompanied by period-instrument ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro.

HUMANS

Leipzig Ballet, under Rémy Fichet, presents "Humans," a double bill exploring creative and abstract dance narratives. Louis Stiens examines dance's embodiment, its impact on choreography, and Leipzig Ballet's history, linking to Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Sofia Nappi blends ballet, contemporary dance, and performance, exploring Baroque and modern elements with music by Clara Schumann and Henry Purcell, reflecting on femininity across eras.

Festival Élite 2025 – Inna KALUGINA

LA VENEXIANA

With the “invention” of opera in the early 17th century came a major change in the prevailing musical taste: instead of writing elaborate, polyphonic madrigals, composers increasingly featured the solo voice in the new genre of the monody and began creating dramatic ensemble pieces. Gabriele Palomba and his ensemble La Venexiana shine a spotlight on this turning point in music history, performing late madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi and works by some of his younger con­temporaries, including Tarquinio Merula, Alessandro Grandi, and Maurizio Cazzati.

Reformations: Cantata

Beguiling baroque expressions of loss and longing tempered with Bohemian lamentation accompany an intriguing world premiere that originates from a chance find in an Irish peat bog.

Saxos

‘Why take up with Plato when a saxophone can equally let us glimpse another world?’ Cioran once said. The musicians of Keybart reveal to us not one world but four—each on a different instrument.

»The Art of Being Human«

Human existence is a contradictory business. »The Art of Being Human« explores the complex impacts of this trite fact. The Grammy award-winning viola da gamba ensemble Phantasm thereby ensures a musical performance at the very highest level. Its members put their instrumental mastery into operation for an evening in which old sounds and contemporary dance blend into an inseparable unit and jointly try to fathom the darkest recesses of the human condition. Choreographer Sommer Ulrickson and allround visual artist Alexander Polzin create a multidisciplinary framework in which music and movement come together, connect with each other, hook into each other, collide and cross fertilise. Under the leadership of Laurence Dreyfus, Phantasm plays music of English masters, such as John Dowland, Henry Purcell and William Byrd. At the same time, the musicians interact in the most diverse way with the dancers, who move as partners and yet adversaries around sculptures by the Berlin artist Alexander Polzin. The result is a staged concert evening, which makes full use of the potential of this currently popular format!

HUMANS

Leipzig Ballet, under Rémy Fichet, presents "Humans," a double bill exploring creative and abstract dance narratives. Louis Stiens examines dance's embodiment, its impact on choreography, and Leipzig Ballet's history, linking to Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. Sofia Nappi blends ballet, contemporary dance, and performance, exploring Baroque and modern elements with music by Clara Schumann and Henry Purcell, reflecting on femininity across eras.

Simply... Philharmonic!4: André Lislevand, Kore Orchestra

André Lislevand, photo: Cezary Zych; Orkiestra Kore, photo: Grzesiek Mart According to eighteenth-century accounts, the French violinist Jean-Baptiste Volumier, as concertmaster of the Dresden court orchestra, turned it into one of the best ensembles in Europe. After Volumier’s death in 1728, the position of concertmaster was taken over by violin virtuoso Johann Georg Pisendel. Before obtaining this position, Pisendel had developed his violin skills partly in Venice, where he studied with and befriended Antonio Vivaldi. Their friendship resulted in mutual dedications of works, as well as Pisendel’s transcribing of Vivaldi’s compositions. He also transcribed works by other composers, such as Francesco Geminiani, whose Concerto Grosso, Op. 2 No. 2 he arranged as a Sonata à quattro. Pisendel’s talent was also appreciated by other composers (including Tomaso Albinoni), who dedicated works to Pisendel. He also passed on his outstanding skills as a teacher, and one of his most famous pupils was Johann Gottlieb Graun, composer of virtuoso concertos for viola da gamba that were also influenced by great virtuosos and were composed with the outstanding gambist Ludwig Christian Hesse in mind. Hesse, in turn, probably learned to play the gamba from his own father, Ernst Christian, who had previously studied in Paris with Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray. Simply… Philharmonic! Project 4: If one were to assign a specific instrument to each country of particular importance on the musical scene of Baroque Europe, the viola da gamba would certainly fall to France. Such an attempt to find national connections to instruments was also made by the eighteenth-century gambist Hubert Le Blanc, who opened his treatise on the instrument with the statement: The Divine Intelligence, among its many gifts, has endowed mortals with Harmony. The violin fell to the Italians, the flute to the Germans, the harpsichord to the English, and the basse de viole to the French. Although the roots of the French school of gamba playing can be traced to England (the first chordal compositions were written there, and the English are credited with popularising the instrument on the Continent), it was in France that some of the instrument’s greatest virtuosos worked and its construction was perfected. Foreign musicians also trained in France, such as the German gambist Ernst Christian Hesse. One instrument related to the viola da gamba is the lute, and works for lute were taken as models for gamba compositions by Antoine Forqueray, among others, a musician contemporary of Marin Marais. In their time, the eminent lute player, theorist and guitarist Robert de Visée, who was also a gamba player, worked in the ensemble of King Louis XIV at Versailles, as Jean Rousseau mentions in one of his letters. The similarity between the gamba and the lute may also have been noticed by Johann Sebastian Bach, as is suggested by the aria ‘Komm süsses Kreuz’ from the St Matthew Passion, BWV 244, in which the composer envisaged a solo part for viola da gamba. In the original version, however, the solo instrument there was the lute. Daniel Laskowski

Brooklyn Rider

The New York-based string quartet Brooklyn Rider has been attracting a wide audience since its inception in 2005 with concerts that often cross genres. They visited Konserthuset for a highly acclaimed concert in 2014 and also performed at Fotografiska. All in line with the ensemble's desire to break away from the traditional and familiar.During their eagerly awaited return to Konserthuset, the programme ranges from British Baroque to French Betsy Jolas's third string quartet from 1973, which, in nine parts, explores the mysterious universe of music. A completely different character is found in Mozart's String Quartet in C Major, often called the Dissonant Quartet due to its long and striking introduction, which today we do not find particularly dissonant.After Arvo Pärt's meditative Solfeggio, Brooklyn Rider concludes with Brahms's wonderful first string quartet with its remarkable coherence. The opening and closing movements are characterized by a delightful and fervent temperament, with tender and luminous music in between.

in bloom

Mu­se­ums­kon­zert VII

Since 2010, ensembles of the Staatskapelle have been performing in the Bode Museum. The concerts, lasting just over an hour, take place in the Gobelin Hall and feature music from past centuries. Visitors can combine the concerts with other museum activities, such as an exhibition visit or a meal at the museum café.

Reverie and Rapture

Växjö-based Musica Vitae joins us accompanied by the British violinist and conductor Hugo Ticciati, who is active in Sweden. He founded the O/Modernt festival in 2011, known for its innovative and cross-genre programming, which also characterizes his concert with Musica Vitae.The first part of the concert presents music infused with religious reverie. We hear the mysticism of Hildegard of Bingen in Vos flores rosarum and wordless violin song in Arvo Pärt's Fratres. Additionally, two meditations on the theme of the suffering mother: John Tavener's Mother of God, Here I Stand from The Veil of the Temple, and Lera Auerbach's Sogno di Stabat Mater (Dream of Stabat Mater). After the interval, the mood shifts from spiritual contemplation to exalted rapture. In the enigmatically dancing Aksak and Ciphers, Swedish composer Albert Schnelzer has encoded both Brahms and family members in the score. This is followed by a musical dialogue between Philip Glass's baroque-inspired Symphony No. 3 and three arrangements of songs from the iconic grunge rock band Nirvana's album Nevermind. Bridging the gap between the baroque and contemporary rock music is Purcell’s Cold Song from his semi-opera The Fairy-Queen.