Adámek: Connection Impossible

Brass-Connection

Blechbläser-Gipfel bei der Deutschen Bahn. Edle Metalle finden zusammen, wenn Posaune, Trompete & Co. im Silberturm der Deutschen Bahn ein Stelldichein geben. Und wenn ein klangprächtiges Quintett des hr-Sinfonieorchesters Frankfurt dabei in luftiger Höhe zu erleben ist, sind nicht nur musikalische Höhepunkte garantiert. Mit einer Perspektive von mehr als 150 Meter Abstand zum Alltag eröffnen sich allen Besucher*innen dieses Kammerflimmerns im obersten Stock des Hochhauses auch ganz praktisch neue Dimensionen. Konzertdauer: ca. 90 Minuten – inklusive Pause

The Swiss Connection: Stravinsky & Martin

The Concertgebouw’s famous Main Hall is one of the best concert halls in the world, well-known for its exceptional acoustics and special atmosphere. In the Main Hall, you will feel history. Here, Gustav Mahler conducted his own compositions, as did Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky. Sergei Rachmaninoff played his own piano concertos in the Main Hall. This is also where musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Yehudi Menuhin gave legendary performances. Right up to now, the Main Hall offers a stage to the world’s best orchestras and musicians. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Main Hall for yourself!

Claron McFadden & Claire Chevallier: American-French Connection

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!

The Vienna-Berlin Connection

The ensemble Philharmonix is a mix of members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Vienna Philharmonic orchestra. What brings them together? The shared urge to combine classical music with jazz, Latin, folk, Hollywood melodies and pop. And so, in this concert, you can hear excerpts from Strauss’s exhilarating operetta Die Fledermaus alongside Schoenberg’s forward-looking Chamber Symphony No. 1, Schubert’s romantic “Death and the Maiden” Quartet as well as a tribute to the Austrian pop singer Falco – all in witty, spirited, unconventional arrangements that play with our expectations and hold loads of surprises.

Pearls in Baroque: The French Connection of Purcell

Diana Damrau & Nikolai Schukoff / NDR Radiophilharmonie / Dirk Kaftan

»Art is not just beauty, art should move people as well,« says Diana Damrau. There can be no doubt that she does this to excellent effect: for years now, the celebrated soprano has been filling opera houses and concert halls all over the world with her radiant voice and a peerless intensity of expression. Yet the appealing Bavarian singer has no airs and graces, nor does she think in terms of musical pigeonholes. Good-humoured and completely authentic, she sings opera and sacred repertoire with the same verve as musicals and film songs. Discount for all under 30: Exclusively for this concert, anyone under 30 can book the REDticket. This means that even the best available seats only cost € 12. Proof of age must be shown when attending the concert, otherwise the difference to the original price will have to be paid. Diana Damrau and her colleague Nikolai Schukoff devote their Elbphilharmonie concert to the great operetta composers, from the »waltz king« Johann Strauss and Berlin native Paul Lincke to Emmerich Kálmán and Franz Lehár. An evening of lovely waltzes and other tunes that should move the audience’s hearts – and their feet as well.

Wagner: Die Walküre

Richard Wagner’s opera »Die Walküre« is a passionate exploration of big themes such as love and betrayal, loyalty and rebellion. The god Wotan wanted to rule through contracts rather than violence but, as a result of broken promises, becomes increasingly entangled in problems until blood begins to flow. Finding no solutions, Wotan finally cries: »One thing alone do I want: the end!« But his daughter Brünnhilde thwarts his plans… At the Hamburg International Music Festival, there is an opportunity to experience the opera in historical original sound for the first time under conductor Kent Nagano. At the festival, Kent Nagano is not conducting »his« orchestra, the Hamburg State Opera, but rather the Dresdner Festspielorchester, Concerto Köln and a top-class cast of soloists, who explore the playing and singing techniques of the 19th century. »More intimate tone colours, a more multi-layered and transparent sound, freed from the ballast of the centuries,« say the performers about the project, which seems to have been tailor-made for the transparent acoustics of the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall. One of Wagner’s most famous pieces, the »Ride of the Valkyries« – famously used by director Francis Ford Coppola as background music to a helicopter attack in the anti-war film »Apocalypse Now« – thus sounds altogether different.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Alan Gilbert

It only lasts seven minutes, but it is nonetheless monumental: Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama »Ein Überlebender aus Warschau« (A Survivor from Warsaw). Schoenberg had readopted the Jewish faith, and he wrote the piece, which opens with a fierce trumpet signal, in 1947 to commemorate the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. The score mixes the narrative of a man hiding in the sewers with German commands, martial rhythms – and finally the hopeful Hebrew words »Schma Yisrael«, which the Jews use to prepare for death. The part of the narrator is taken by Dominique Horwitz, himself the son of Jewish parents. The French-German actor and chansonnier is in great demand for performances of literary works of music, from Tom Waits’s »Black Rider« to Stravinsky’s »Histoire du soldat«. And the soloists in the second part of the programme likewise have resounding names: among them are the American soprano Susanna Phillips, alto Gerhild Romberger and baritone Michael Nagy. »War and Peace« is the motto of the Hamburg International Music Festival, and chief conductor Alan Gilbert and his NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra place the emphasis on a work of hope and brotherly love: Beethoven’s world-famous Ninth Symphony. The overwhelming finale culminates in Friedrich Schiller’s lines »All men shall be brothers«, which win the day against all the powers of destruction. Beethoven not only touched a nerve in his own time by ending the symphony with a large-scale chorus of rejoicing: nowadays, everyone is familiar with the melody in the guise of the European anthem. Even the playing time of a compact disc, when the CD format was introduced, was geared to enable Beethoven’s oversized Ninth to be played without a break.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Alan Gilbert

It only lasts seven minutes, but it is nonetheless monumental: Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama »Ein Überlebender aus Warschau« (A Survivor from Warsaw). Schoenberg had readopted the Jewish faith, and he wrote the piece, which opens with a fierce trumpet signal, in 1947 to commemorate the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. The score mixes the narrative of a man hiding in the sewers with German commands, martial rhythms – and finally the hopeful Hebrew words »Schma Yisrael«, which the Jews use to prepare for death. The part of the narrator is taken by Dominique Horwitz, himself the son of Jewish parents. The French-German actor and chansonnier is in great demand for performances of literary works of music, from Tom Waits’s »Black Rider« to Stravinsky’s »Histoire du soldat«. And the soloists in the second part of the programme likewise have resounding names: among them are the American soprano Susanna Phillips, alto Gerhild Romberger and baritone Michael Nagy. »War and Peace« is the motto of the Hamburg International Music Festival, and chief conductor Alan Gilbert and his NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra place the emphasis on a work of hope and brotherly love: Beethoven’s world-famous Ninth Symphony. The overwhelming finale culminates in Friedrich Schiller’s lines »All men shall be brothers«, which win the day against all the powers of destruction. Beethoven not only touched a nerve in his own time by ending the symphony with a large-scale chorus of rejoicing: nowadays, everyone is familiar with the melody in the guise of the European anthem. Even the playing time of a compact disc, when the CD format was introduced, was geared to enable Beethoven’s oversized Ninth to be played without a break.

100 years of BDLO Federal Association of Amateur Music Symphony and Chamber Orchestras

The State Association of North German Amateur Orchestras celebrates the 100th anniversary of the BDLO Federal Association of Amateur Music Symphony and Chamber Orchestras with Mahler’s »Resurrection Symphony«. To this day, performances of Mahler’s monumental Second Symphony are an impressive event - not only in Hamburg, where the composer once had the inspiration for the choral finale in the Michel. Together, the Gustav Mahler Association Hamburg, which has set itself the task of raising public awareness of the composer and the traditional music association, founded a project orchestra and choir especially for this concert, bringing the work of the century to the Laeiszhalle to mark the anniversary.