Grand soir Edgard Varèse

Autour du Petit grand festival

»Grand Vibe Station«

Shanghai Grand Theatre

The London Philharmonic Orchestra perform at the Shanghai Grand Theatre.Conductor Paavo Järvi presents a powerful programme featuring works by Weber, Haydn and Tchaikovsky. Julia Hagen takes centre stage for a dazzling performance of Haydn’s First Cello Concerto.

Guest at Grand Théâtre de Provence

»And the soul, unguarded, wants to soar in free flights, to live within the magic circle of the night deeply and a thousandfold.« These dream-lorn lines by Hermann Hesse inspired Richard Strauss to write one of his moving »Four Last Songs«. These depict a life cycle and bear witness to his confrontation with his own death. At 83, the aged composer looked back on his triumphant life »weary of wandering«. When a journalist asked him about his next projects, Strauss answered with a wink: »Well, just die!« But his son persuaded him to compose another »major work«, saying, »Dad, stop brooding, write some beautiful songs instead.« And Strauss succeeded in a beguiling way, for the highly romantic settings hover in an inimitable atmosphere of weightlessness. With us, the voice of Hanna-Elisabeth Müller soars to these soulful songs. Christoph Eschenbach then leads us through a work by Bruckner that was first performed in 1873 and was composed as a direct expression of a deep life crisis due to the so-called »St. Anna affair«: as he was hardly noticed as a composer in Vienna at that time, he gave piano lessons at the St. Anna educational institution – and once confidentially called one of his pupils »my darling«. Even though Bruckner felt wrongly suspected, the newspapers made a scandal out of this event. He was soon rehabilitated, but wrote his second symphony in this humiliated state of mind – which therefore has a restless, pessimistic underlying mood: it fluctuates between heartfelt prayers, desperate outbursts, clueless silences and wild dance scenes.

Freiburger Barockorchester: Grand Tour

The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra celebrates 25 years of concerts in Stuttgart and Berlin with a program featuring 18th-century composers encountered along the route. From Rastatt (Fischer) to Stuttgart (Pez), Ansbach (Kusser), Meiningen (J.L. Bach), and finally Eisenach/Berlin (J.S. Bach & Telemann), the concert showcases the diverse regional influences, from Lully in the southwest to Italian styles in central Germany, culminating in the individual styles of Bach and Telemann in the northeast. A free introductory lecture takes place at 7:15 pm in the Rolf-Böhme-Saal.

Summer in Lesmona – Grand Orchestra Concert

Grand Chinese New Year Concert 2025

The traditional Chinese New Year concert unites cultures, brings symphonic masterpieces of classical Chinese music to the stage and opens up new musical horizons. Every year for more than 25 years, first-class traditional Chinese orchestras have performed in leading concert halls during the Chinese Spring Festival, offering a rich blend of China’s diverse musical cultures.

Hathor Consort / Dorothee Mields / Romina Lischka

What traces do wars leave on the music of the time? The Hathor Consort, a viol ensemble of to which harp, organ and cornett are added, joins forces with soprano Dorothee Mields to look for echoes of the Thirty Years’ War in the works of composers who witnessed this catastrophic period in European history. With his »Trostgedichten in Widerwertigkeit deß Kriegs«, the poet Martin Opitz wrote an influential treatise of edification in the midst of this fierce conflict that claimed the lives of around a third of the population. The composers of the age attempted to process the deep trauma of violence, hunger and utter defencelessness through their music. This programme brings together four musical witnesses of the time:Heinrich Schütz, Samuel Scheidt, Andreas Hammerschmidt and Heinrich Albert. The acclaimed Hathor Consort focuses mainly on Renaissance and Baroque music, but it regularly combines this with music from other cultures as well as with contemporary works. Dorothee Mields likewise focuses entirely on Early Music, and her clear and intimate soprano is regarded as one of today’s top voices in the field of historic performing practice.

Jakub Józef Orliński / Il Pomo d’Oro

Jakub Józef Orliński bridges the gap between the past and the present effortlessly: with a warm, radiant voice and rousing enthusiasm, the countertenor, who has already won the OPUS KLASSIK award three times, transports his audience to centuries long past. And yet he is not an artist who loses himself in the past – on the contrary. Orliński’s sparkling charm and his sympathetically sober view of things like success and career are as unpretentious as they are contemporary. In this ProArte concert, you can look forward to his excursion into the musically incredibly rich world of the Italian Baroque.

Monteverdi-Chor Hamburg / lauttencompagney Berlin / Antonius Adamske

Who doesn’t know the Eurovision anthem with the opening bars of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s »Te Deum«! The renowned Monteverdi Choir Hamburg, together with soloists and the lautten compagney Berlin under the direction of Antonius Adamske, presents the entire work in its original historical sound – with timpani and trumpets.