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For an evening dedicated to peace, the Israeli conductor Lahav Shani brings together two world-class orchestras at the Kreuzkirche: the Munich Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert, in which members of each orchestra share a desk, reflects not only the 80-year anniversary of the end of World War II and thus the liberation from the Nazi reign of terror, but also marks the beginning of the history of reconciliation between Germany and Israel.

For his second Festival concert, Lahav Shani moves from the conductor’s podium to the piano. Together with members of the Munich Philharmonic and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, he presents a unique evening of intimate chamber music. The program is dedicated to artists who were persecuted and found a refuge in music, or whose works were banned for ideological reasons – and where could this find a more appropriate place than the crypt of the Frauenkirche, itself a symbol of peace and tolerance! The pianist and composer Ilse Fromm-Michaels was silenced due to her husband’s Jewish family background. In her »Musica larga« of 1944, her voice is heard in a moving Adagio. At the Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto, the Austrian composer Viktor Ullmann composed his String Quartet No. 3, shot through with sad beauty. And Dmitri Shostakovich’s only Piano Quintet tells of the inner struggle between persecution and conformism, written four years after the devastating article in »Pravda« which would change the composer’s life forever.

In 2025, the Dresdner Musikfestspiele brings the NHK Symphony Orchestra, renowned throughout the world as one of Asia’s leading orchestras, to Dresden for the first time, where it gives two performances. Under the baton of its chief conductor Fabio Luisi, the former general music director of the State Opera of Saxony in Dresden, it will join forces with the outstanding Japanese violinist Akiko Suwanai to interpret Alban Berg’s astoundingly beautiful and moving Violin Concerto »Dem Andenken eines Engels« (To the Memory of an Angel) on the evening before the Festival’s official opening night.

The Festival’s opening concert stands witness to the close musical friendship Jan Vogler and Fabio Luisi have enjoyed for many years. When the conductor now finally brings his famous Japanese orchestra to the Dresdner Musikfestspiele, this promises a glorious evening, featuring a highlight of cello literature and one of the great symphonic masterworks. Performed by the Festival’s intendant Jan Vogler, Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1 in C-major was long believed lost, until a copy of the parts was discovered at the National Museum in Prague in 1961.

The Musikfestspiele, which regularly hosts the world’s leading orchestras, is delighted that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra – one of the most venerable and prestigious orchestras in the USA – will stop in Dresden once again during its 2025 tour of Europe. Under the baton of the Dutch star conductor Jaap van Zweden, the American musicians will fill Dresden’s Kulturpalast with Gustav Mahler’s visionary music.

In 1853, the 20-year-old Johannes Brahms was traveling along the Rhine on foot, and he stopped to visit the Schumanns in Düsseldorf. »Robert loves him. He is a great joy to him, both as a human and an artist«, Clara noted with enthusiasm. The close friendship between the young composer and the older married artists survived even difficult times. After Robert Schumann entered the insane asylum, Brahms supported Clara, pregnant at the time, and her six children.

A concert with the Staatskapelle Dresden under the baton of Tugan Sokhiev and with Sol Gabetta as a soloist: this is the stuff musical dreams are made of. Especially since Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 are outstanding works of their respective composers, which means the audience is in for an extra-special treat. »Since Beethoven, nothing even similar has been written…!«, the conductor Arthur Nikisch uttered when he gave the first performance of Bruckner’s Seventh in 1884.

A few notes are enough to recognize Arvo Pärt’s music. In his oeuvre, profundity and pure beauty merge in a unique way – moving listeners and inspiring them to contemplate the essential things in life. In 2025, the composer born in Paide, Estonia in 1935 celebrates his 90th birthday – one of the very greatest living composers. And what better way to celebrate this event than with a concert? The program includes works for choir and organ, inviting the audience to discover Pärt’s art in its full density, intensity and enchantment.

The organ is known as the king of instruments for a reason. Its sound is sublime, sometimes even out of this world. All the stops will be pulled out – literally! – when the Kulturpalast’s own organist Olivier Latry joins his wife Shin-Young Lee at the keyboard. The duo will coax unforgettable sounds from the organ at the main auditorium of the Kulturpalast, which boasts 4,109 pipes and a sound to rival its visual impressiveness. The program awaiting the audience is highly intriguing, as it features works not originally written for organ, but of such polyphony and orchestral colorfulness that they unfold an effect all their own on this grand instrument. They include »Le Sacre du printemps« by Igor Stravinsky and the famous »Lever du jour« from Maurice Ravel’s »Daphnis et Chloé«.

Even as a teenager, she met Oscar Peterson and Chick Corea, two of the greatest jazz piano legends. The Japanese pianist Hiromi is one of a kind, a superstar not only in her homeland. Her musical ideas are inspired by classical music, fusion jazz and progressive rock. Over the course of her 20-year career, the virtuoso artist and Grammy winner has surprised her audiences time and again, without any trace of (sonic) routine creeping in. Her latest project is big on groove, and together with the fusion jazz band Sonicwonder, specifically founded for this occasion, she takes the listeners into fascinating sonic dream worlds in the program »SonicWonderland«. This is hard to top when it comes to playfulness and melodic inventiveness.