“Max Raabe & Palast Orchester” are internationally renowned for entertainment at its best. The reason for their success lies in the uniqueness and excellent quality of their performance. The classically trained musicians work as seriously at the interpretation of their music as they would at that of a composition by Beethoven. Max’s drily witty concert announcements provide a humorous counterpoint and a main attraction in the show. Quote: “Because perhaps a woman brings her husband to a concert and he might not like the singer or the music, but he may like the humor of the jokes.”
Beethoven‘s Nine: Ode to Humanity
In early 2023, filmmaker Larry Weinstein set out to make a documentary about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. It was supposed to be about how far we have come in the two undred years since it was written. But when world events pull Larry into his own film, the question becomes a deeply personal one. Beethoven’s Nine is a documentary about music, but also about war and hope. It follows nine unique individuals, including Ukrainian musicians, a deaf composer, a Polish rock star, a best-selling author, a legendary cartoonist and Weinstein himself, as they try to better understand the legacy of Beethoven’s Ninth, the composer’s own struggles, the inspiration music can provide and how humanity continues to look for hope even in the darkest times.
Die schweigsame Frau
Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman), the first and only joint work by Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, was performed for the first time at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. The opera embodies comic opera in a new and unexpected way, starting with the genre name, which Strauss used here for the first and only time in his career. Compositionally, it is his most progressive work. With his new production of Richard Strauss’ opera, director Jan Philipp Gloger places social issues such as loneliness and housing shortages at the centre of the opera. The superb cast brings his ideas to life with “energetic performance and balanced vocal power” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). “What Thielemann conjures up from the orchestra pit is classical cinema at its finest.” (BZ)
In the Maze – Jörg Widmann
Clarinettist, conductor and composer Jörg Widmann is working on a composition. He has been commissioned to write a large-scale trumpet concerto (“Towards Paradise”) for the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The film accompanies Widmann on this journey, from the very first drafts of the piece to the premiere performance, taking the audience through diverse psychic and sonic realms. Music takes on a life of its own in the moment of writing, believes Jörg Widmann. It assumes its own form, becoming a living being that forges its own path. As such, it remains a fragment, because it is not what he, the writer, had intended. For Widmann, the image that best describes this progression is a maze. We follow Jörg Widmann into his maze, reaching for the thread that runs through his life and work. Together with him, we experience the ups and downs, the euphoric moments as well as the moments of crisis that are brought about by the process of writing.
Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays Messiaen “Le Catalogue d’oiseaux”
The “Catalogue d’oiseaux” (“Catalogue of Birds”) is one of the most important works by Olivier Messiaen. The composer wrote the 13 piano pieces between 1956 and 1958. What may sound at first like an ornithological reference work is one of the most unusual and brilliant piano works of its time. The French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is the leading interpreter of Olivier Messiaen’s piano works. His interpretation of the “Catalogue d’oiseaux” is performed in the St. Canisius Church in Berlin. As a pupil of Messiaen’s second wife Yvonne Loriod at the Conservatoire de Paris, Pierre-Laurent Aimard already had musical and personal contact with Olivier Messiaen at an early age. As a 16-year-old, the
exceptional pianist won the Messiaen Competition. Pierre-Laurent Aimard was awarded the Echo Klassik for his recording “Hommage à Messiaen”. Programme: from “Le Catalogue d’oiseaux”: Le traquet stapazin (The Western black-eared wheatear); Le courlis cendré (The Eurasian curlew); L’alouette calandrelle (The Greater short-toed lark); L’alouette lulu (The Woodlark); Le merle bleu (The Blue rock thrush)
John Cranko’s The Taming of the Shrew
John Cranko’s The Taming of the Shrew is one of the greatest ballet comedies of the 20th century. Inspired by William Shakespeare’s world-famous play, Cranko brings to vivid life the story of the shrewish Katherina whom no one wants to marry and the dashing and clever Petruchio who makes her his wife and “tames” her. Set to cheerful and boisterous music by Kurt-Heinz Stolze after Domenico Scarlatti and with colourful costumes and a charming set by Elisabeth Dalton, The Taming of the Shrew evokes the sunlit streets and gardens of Italy. The perfect ballet for the whole family, danced by the Stuttgart Ballet. “This company is world class.” (Tanznetz) / “Cranko’s adaption of Shakespeare’s comedy is an artistic gem.” (FAZ)
Salzburg Festival 2025: Mozart – Mass in C minor
The Salzburg Festival brings Mozart’s monumental, unfinished Great Mass in C minor to St. Peter’s Abbey Church – the beautiful church for which the piece was composed and where it was probably also premiered. Gianluca Capuano conducts the orchestra Les Musiciens du Prince – Monaco and the vocal ensemble Il Canto di Orfeo. Mélissa Petit and Patricia Nolz are an “outstanding female duo” (Die Presse): Pétit’s coloraturas “sparkle like precious gems” and Nolz’s “darkly-shaded, slender soprano blends beautifully” (Salzburger Nachrichten)
Salzburg Festival 2025: Mozart Matinee with Kyohei Sorita
“It’s all there in this Mozart adventure” (Kronenzeitung): Making his debut at the Salzburg Festival, Japanese pianist and conductor Kyohei Sorita (“a breath of fresh air” – Drehpunktkultur) performs two important piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart alongside the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg as part of the traditional Mozart
Matinees in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum Foundation. PROGRAM: Symphony in G major K. 318, Piano concerto in E-flat major K. 271 ‘Jeunehomme’, Overture from Le nozze di Figaro K. 492; Piano concerto in D major K. 537 ‘Coronation’; Alla Turca (Allegretto) from the Piano Sonata in A, K. 331 (encore)
Salzburg Festival 2024: Maxime Pascal conducts Nono and Dallapiccola
The Salzburg Festival features an extraordinary concert of Nono’s *Il canto sospeso*, which leaves the audience “speechless.” The composition, based on farewell letters from political prisoners, narrates actor Tobias Moretti amidst challenging music executed flawlessly by Maxime Pascal, the RSO, and the Bayerischer Rundfunkchor. The second half showcases Dallapiccola’s *Il prigionero*, with baritone Georg Nigl delivering a powerful performance. The concert concludes with the audience giving both reverent applause and standing ovations. “The burning humanity of Nono’s vision seemed to possess all who listened (and played)”(Seen and Heard)
Salzburg Festival 2024: Dudamel & Grigorian – Vienna Philharmonic
The promise of a Strauss double-bill with the Wiener Philharmoniker would be enough to have most concertgoers swooning – add in audience favourite Asmik Grigorian and Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, and the Salzburg audience could not be more ecstatic. Grigorian interpreted Strauss’ Vier letzte Lieder with “penetrating intensity” (VN), capturing the fleeting emotions of each song: “She effortlessly savours Strauss’s soaring flights of fancy and lavishes herself on his wide-ranging cantilenas” (BR Klassik). After this moving performance, Dudamel and the orchestra take the audience on a musical hike with Strauss’ tone poem Eine Alpensinfonie. “Gustavo Dudamel’s interpretation…is so vividly real. The orchestra once again delivers a brilliant performance of expressive, joyfully committed playing” (Opera Online).