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Fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, the German diplomat Walter and his wife Lisa travel by ship from Europe to Brazil, where he is to take up a new position. Everything seems peaceful until Lisa unexpectedly notices a passenger on board who reminds her of Marta, a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she worked as a guard. Lisa never told her husband anything about this past, and repressed it as best she could. But now images of her own involvement and guilt break out; the sea voyage leads inexorably into her own abysses.

Time is very confusing for a theater mind. When you have been in the world for so long, you lose the feeling for it. But it seems to be very important to people and we hear that in the music too: many composers have written music about the seasons or times of day. Here you can listen to a clock ticking, hear the big tower clock striking there, or be reminded of an evening sky. The orchestra takes the young audience on a musical journey through time, where one thing is certain: in this children's concert, time certainly does not pass too slowly.

Around ten years before his opera "The Passenger", which is on the Lübeck Music Theatre's repertoire this season, Mieczysław Weinberg composed his brilliant violin concerto in 1959. Influences from the musical tradition of the Eastern Jewish diaspora, with which he had been familiar since his childhood in Poland, shape the melody and harmony of the work. It is conceived as a symphony in four movements and dedicated to the great Russian violinist Leonid Kogan. In Lübeck, the solo part will be played by a proven Weinberg interpreter, the award-winning violinist Benjamin Schmid.

It was the conductor Paul Sacher who inspired Frank Martin to focus on an instrumentation in a concert that one would actually associate with a baroque basso continuo. In the juxtaposition of two string orchestras with soloists on harp, piano and harpsichord, Martin created a constellation that is vaguely reminiscent of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos just before the end of the Second World War.

Together with his sister Maria Anna, known as Nannerl, who was also a gifted pianist, Mozart played his Concerto for Two Pianos, composed in Salzburg in 1779. It represents an important stage in his development of the piano concerto, the genre in which he was particularly successful during his years in Vienna, from 1781 onwards. The high point and conclusion of this phase is the Piano Concerto in C minor, composed in 1786. Of all Mozart's piano concertos, this one most clearly shows him to be a pioneer of Romanticism.

Summer is coming and the theater spirit is now really gripped by the travel bug. Get on board and off you go on the Trans-Siberian Ghost Train! But where is it going? First, it treats itself to a short stop in Kiev. There, a famous gate leads to another world: the old witch Baba Yaga flies around on her broom, the blind Princess Iolanta dreams of seeing, a group of merchants travels through the steppe and a happy wedding party dances a wild sabre dance.

Thomas Mann was an insatiable record listener. When Süddeutsche Rundfunk interviewed him in 1954 for a broadcast of the series "Who wishes what?", he put together the program for his personal "request concert." To mark the 150th birthday of the world-famous writer from Lübeck, the Philharmonic Orchestra is giving a new performance of these favorite works by Thomas Mann - on the stage of the theater in his hometown.

It is part of the Philharmonic Orchestra's tradition to accompany selected students from the Lübeck University of Music as part of their concert examination at the end of a concert season. Three to four works for solo instruments and orchestra will be on the program at this final concert in the Great Hall of the University of Music. With this evening, the Theater Lübeck and its orchestra once again underline the special importance that the development of aspiring musicians and their entry into professional life have for them.

The conductor and composer Anna Skryleva begins the youth concert with one of her own compositions and will give the young listeners an insight into the creation of a composition. Richard Strauss was inspired by a journey in his first tone poem. His music first takes the audience to Campania, describes the dignified ruins of the Eternal City of Rome, takes a short break on the beach in Sorrento and finally ends in the lively city life of Naples.