Kölner Kurrende

90 Jahre Erstes Kölner Akkordeon-Orchester

90 Jahre und kein bisschen leise! Getreu diesem Motto krönt das Erste Kölner Akkordeon-Orchester sein 90-jähriges Bestehen durch einen mitreißenden Abend auf höchstem musikalischem Niveau. Sein unvergleichlicher Klang und seine künstlerische Vielseitigkeit haben das Orchester in den vergangenen 90 Jahren auf Bühnen in aller Welt geführt, und seine filigran ausgefeilten Arrangements begeisterten dabei das Publikum unter anderem in den USA, Kanada, Namibia und Brasilien. Bereits zum fünften Mal wird das Erste Kölner Akkordeon-Orchester nun seine Anhänger in der Kölner Philharmonie verzaubern. Dabei freut es sich auf »Mr. Good Life« Tom Gaebel, der sich mit seinem jugendhaften Charme enthusiastisch über die Bühnen Europas singt und swingt sowie den Kölner Chor »Die Erben«, der wie kein anderer harmonische Präzision mit leidenschaftlichem Ausdruck vereint.Ein rauschendes Fest, mit dem das Erste Kölner Akkordeon-Orchester sich und seinen einzigartigen Klang zelebriert!​

Kölner Jugendchor St. Stephan

Mit Freude und Hingabe begeistern seit vier Jahrzehnten die jugendlichen Sängerinnen und Sänger um Chorleiter Michael Kokott ihr Publikum. Das facettenreiche Programm reicht vom A-cappella-Arrangement von Popsongs über Gospels bis zu kölschen Tönen. Im zweistündigen Programm lädt das Ensemble zum Zuhören und Mitsingen ein.

Karnevalistische Matinee zugunsten des Kölner Rosenmontagszuges

Ronald Brautigam | Die Kölner Akademie | Michael Alexander Willens

When Ronald Brautigam plays the fortepiano, even familiar pieces sound excitingly new. His uncompromising playing has led to the re-evaluation of prominent composers. He performs classics like Mozart with passion, sometimes thundering the keys, sometimes coaxing a wealth of colors from the instrument. Since 2009, he's collaborated with the Kölner Akademie and Michael Alexander Willens, recording acclaimed complete sets of Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos. The Cologne-based orchestra also performs Louise Farrenc's 1st Symphony, a rare successful female composer of the 19th century.

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.

Britten: War Requiem / Teodor Currentzis

Benjamin Britten was a passionate pacifist. With his »War Requiem« of 1961, he composed his most impressive and moving confessional work in 1961, which is considered one of the central works of the 20th century against war and in favour of peace. With this key work, Teodor Currentzis delivers the musical epilogue for the Hamburg International Music Festival and closes the programmatic arc of the motto »War and Peace«. The star conductor comes to Hamburg once again in his role as chief conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra and has engaged baritone Matthias Goerne, among others, for the hugely scored »War Requiem« alongside his orchestra and three formidable choirs. Britten wrote his »War Requiem« to commemorate the devastating air raid on Coventry in 1940 and for the consecration of the rebuilt cathedral in the city. The composer himself conducted the acclaimed 1962 premiere of this monumental composition for orchestra, choirs, three solo singers and organ. The soloists back then included Goerne’s teacher Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. However, Britten’s »War Requiem« is not simply a protest against all forms of inhumanity and the wars of the 20th century. His requiem mass, which ends with a prayer for eternal peace, has lost none of its power or relevance.