Saxophone!

Signum Saxophone Quartet

SIGNUM saxophone quartet

Free Lunchtime Concert: Osimun Saxophone Quartet

For many years now, Lunchtime Concerts have been held in the Main Hall and the Recital Hall. The concerts range from public rehearsals by the Concertgebouworkest, to chamber music performances by young up-and-coming artists.For Lunchtime Concerts you will require a free ticket, which you can buy online. Doors to the concert hall open about 30 minutes before the Lunchtime Concert starts.We offer a broad range of music: the majority of concerts include classical music, but you can sometimes hear more modern repertoire. The concert programme is announced one week in advance on our website. The concerts last thirty minutes and are free of charge. Visitors are advised that these concerts are suitable for children from six years old.

CANCELLED: Xenon Saxophone Quartet / Sergey Markin / Alina Heinl

Due to illness this event has had to be cancelled – it will not be rescheduled on an alternative date. Ticket buyers will be informed by e-mail. Under the following link you can find information about ticket price refunds: Information on refunds

Guest performance Soundscapes of Film Music: Orchestra and Saxophone Quartet

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Nils Mönkemeyer / Kent Nagano

The Russian composer Vladimir Tarnopolski is certainly no stranger to contemporary music. His works have been performed at many major festivals over recent decades. He has received various prizes and released many of his works on CD. As a professor of composition at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, he has also passed on his knowledge to a whole generation of young composers. »Im Dunkel vor der Dämmerung« (»In the Dark before Dawn«) is the title of a new work commissioned by the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and premiered in this concert. »Sinfonia Eroica« was the title Ludwig van Beethoven gave his third symphony in 1804, a »heroic symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man«. Whether or not this »great man« was to be little Napoleon? At first it was, in all likelihood. But Beethoven probably decided to leave out any corresponding dedication, since the Corsican’s personal coronation as emperor was, in the composer’s eyes, a bitter betrayal of the republican ideas of the French Enlightenment. Was Beethoven himself perhaps the hero? An innovator in the context of music history? Whatever the answer, he certainly breaks new ground with his »Eroica«.

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Nils Mönkemeyer / Kent Nagano

The Russian composer Vladimir Tarnopolski is certainly no stranger to contemporary music. His works have been performed at many major festivals over recent decades. He has received various prizes and released many of his works on CD. As a professor of composition at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory, he has also passed on his knowledge to a whole generation of young composers. »Im Dunkel vor der Dämmerung« (»In the Dark before Dawn«) is the title of a new work commissioned by the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and premiered in this concert. »Sinfonia Eroica« was the title Ludwig van Beethoven gave his third symphony in 1804, a »heroic symphony composed to celebrate the memory of a great man«. Whether or not this »great man« was to be little Napoleon? At first it was, in all likelihood. But Beethoven probably decided to leave out any corresponding dedication, since the Corsican’s personal coronation as emperor was, in the composer’s eyes, a bitter betrayal of the republican ideas of the French Enlightenment. Was Beethoven himself perhaps the hero? An innovator in the context of music history? Whatever the answer, he certainly breaks new ground with his »Eroica«.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Stefan Asbury

Born in Teheran, Sara Abazari is one of today’s leading voices in her country’s contemporary music. Her two latest compositions, which were recently premiered in the Berlin Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus, are directly connected with the movement »Woman, Life, Freedom« and the prominent role of women in Iran. »in solidum« is a piece that was premiered in its first version in autumn 2023; the new, large-scale orchestral work by the composer, who studied in Cologne and Vienna, is now being performed by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. With Galina Ustwolskaja (1919-2006), the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra preesents one of the 20th century’s most uncompromising composers after the interval. Ms Ustwolskaja gained a reputation for her visionary and always highly unusual combinations of instruments: »Dies irae« is scored for eight double basses, piano and a large, resonant wooden block, which the percussionist beats with enigmatic hammer blows. Performances of the work produce the picture, precisely calculated by the composer, of an archaic ritual that evokes a set of metaphors between death, protest and apotheosis: this is a »breakthrough piece«, a musical onslaught on all conventional boundaries, and indisputably Ustwolskaja’s most famous work. The evening opens with Edgar Varèse’s virtuoso piece »Intégrales« for wind instruments and percussion, one of the founding documents of 20th century music. Written for the avant-garde »International Composers’ Guild«, which was founded in 1921 by Carlos Salzedo and Varèse himself, »Intégrales« was given its first performance in March 1925 in New York’s Aeolian Hall.

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Ingo Metzmacher

Ingo Metzmacher is one of the great explorers among conductors. He tirelessly explores new and little-known areas of the repertoire. His curiosity already characterised him during his time as General Music Director in Hamburg between 1997 and 2005. And this also characterises the vocal symphonic programme with which he returns to the podium of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in November. One day before his 67th birthday, Metzmacher conducts two rarely performed works by two jubilarians from the Romantic and modern eras with a round birthday in 2024 – and fills the stage in the Grand Hall with an opulent line-up that, alongside the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, includes the MDR-Rundfunkchor and nine vocal soloists.

NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover / Anja Petersen / Pierre Bleuse

As part of the »Elbphilharmonie Visions« festival, the NDR Radiophilharmonie and conductor Pierre Bleuse present a work by Italian composer Clara Iannotta, who continues to explore the boundaries between noise and composition, as well as Arnulf Herrmann’s »Tour de Trance« for soprano and orchestra. As at the latter’s world premiere, the solo part will be performed by opera singer Anja Petersen.

Aurora Orchestra / Abel Selaocoe / Nicholas Collon

The South African cellist and composer Abel Selaocoe has an irrepressible energy and stage presence that has propelled him from a township near Johannesburg to the top of the music world. Together with London’s Aurora Orchestra, whose Elbphilharmonie debut was hailed by the press as a »boldly creative orchestra« with »extravagantly sparkling interpretation«, an explosive evening is guaranteed. Selaocoe transcends genre boundaries with ease in his Cello Concerto. He combines Western music from classical to soul with the sounds and traditions of his homeland – including intense, throaty singing, which plays just as big a role in the concerto as the cello does. In the second half of the concert, the Aurora Orchestra presents its trademark: a major symphonic work, played entirely from memory without sheet music. Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which the composer himself described as a »sheer expression of joy, happiness and the affirmation of life«, should be a perfect fit for the enthusiastic young orchestra.