This is the Greatest Show!

Rosa is awake

What do Sleeping Beauty and Pamina from THE MAGIC FLUTE have in common? What stories can be told with music? And how many instruments can a single percussionist actually play? We set out together in search of answers with the help of music by Maurice Ravel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Georges Bizet as well as newly told fairy tale classics. An interactive lecture concert with musicians from the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Rosa is awake

What do Sleeping Beauty and Pamina from THE MAGIC FLUTE have in common? What stories can be told with music? And how many instruments can a single percussionist actually play? We set out together in search of answers with the help of music by Maurice Ravel, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Georges Bizet as well as newly told fairy tale classics. An interactive lecture concert with musicians from the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Discourse at the Philharmonie “Is climate change disappearing from the political agenda?”

Marine biologist Antje Boetius and sociologist Steffen Mau discuss a controversial issue with Christiane Florin.

Future X – When Is Tomorrow?

Making music together, dancing, singing, acting or creating choreography sequences: this is possible in the community project »Future X – When Is Tomorrow?«. Anyone who is curious and also aged 16 and over is invited to come along and get creative in the rehearsals and workshops being held from October 2024 onwards. Participants can choose from workshops focused on music and songwriting, movement and dance, creative writing and sound design using modular synthesizers. Parctipants more interested in being part of a large group can opt for the big rehearsals where the results from all workshop groups are put together. The result will be a collaborative performance created from nothing that is completely dedicated to ideas related to »the future«. The final performances form part of the Hamburg International Music Festival – featuring a full programme with the overarching theme of »Future«.

Watch This Space | Kaleidoskop

The Academy has chosen compositions that demand quite special ways of approaching their instruments. Stephen Montague, in Thule Ultima, has the wind quintet play mainly on their mouthpieces, like a concert of exotic birds. George Crumb likewise calls for special timbres in his string quartet Black Angels: written to commemorate the victims of the Vietnam War, this pacifist composer asks the strings to play a quotation from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden using the wood of their bows (col legno), producing a bleak, oppressive tone. Ligeti’s Six Bagatelles, written shortly after his emigration from Hungary, reflect his immersion in Western culture. Ravel wrote Le Tombeau de Couperin as funeral music for the great French claveciniste. The movements originated during the First World War, and Ravel soon dedicated each one to a fallen French soldier from his circle of friends – a musical memorial spanning the centuries. His Sonata for Violin and Violoncello is likewise a funeral piece for a deceased composer, Claude Debussy.

Watch This Space | Anton Barakhovsky and the BRSO academy

Watch This Space | Stefan Schilli and the BRSO Academy

BRSO solo oboist Stefan Schilli has been a Friend of the Academy for many years and is wholeheartedly committed to the Academy’s up-and-coming professional musicians. With his program for this Watch-This-Space concert, he not only wants to support the scholarship recipients, but also specifically challenge them – for instance with Mozart’s great serenade for winds, the Gran Partita, whose Adagio is also one of the most beautiful that Mozart ever wrote. Ligeti himself considered the Ten Pieces for Wind Quintet to be “miniature concertos” in which the individual instrumentalists are showcased in particularly striking ways. This is also the case with Bach, where there is an equal juxtaposition of musical lines with different timbres and characteristics.

Kustbandet in Concert – Jazz is Fun

Kustbandet has been committed to 1920s and 30s jazz since the band’s formation by a few enthusiastic schoolmates in Årsta in the 1960s. With high spirits, energy and professionalism, they have nurtured the legacy of greats like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie, and presented that legacy with pleasure to Sweden and the world. Like their role models before them, Kustbandet is musically rooted in early-twentieth-century New Orleans and the jazz and swing of Harlem – eras in which jazz was a popular, festive style of music for dance and entertainment.They’ve had numerous successes over the decades, appearing at thousands of concerts, festivals and jazz clubs. As Swedish jazz ambassadors, Kustbandet has toured 20 countries and been celebrated by the media, jazz lovers, and not least – by greats like Arne Domnérus, Benny Carter and Dizzy Gillespie. Leif “Smoke Rings” Andersson referred to Kustbandet as his special “Swingin’ Swedes”.Jazz is Fun traditionally combines new and old works with a surprise or two.

Watch This Space | Klaus Mäkelä

Watch this space | Viola, Viola

Spotlight on the viola(s)! The composer and viola player Klaus-Peter Werani has assembled an all-viola programme with his BRSO colleagues Tobias Reifland, Anja Kreynacke, Giovanni Menna and German Tcakulov. It consists entirely of works from the modern era to the present day, all devoted to the deep and rich tone of the viola in combinations ranging from duo to string quintet. Founded during the covid pandemic, Watch This Space has evolved into a chamber music series that focuses not only on the new performance arena in Munich’s Werksviertel-Mitte district, but also on rarely heard works in smaller formats.