Conductor

Choreographer Mats Ek seized the earthbound power of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring . Fueling his unique, highly theatrical style, he created an exceptional, reworked version of the piece for the Opéra de Lyon Ballet and full Orchestra. This thrilling event starts off with the gloriously vibrating incantations deployed in Sharon Eyal's House.

The Rite of Spring / House

Opéra National De Lyon

Overflowing emotions, blossoming nature—and budding love: The merry month of May has always inspired composers to flights of fancy. While Schumann and Mozart languish with restraint in their famous May compositions, Frederick Loewe is more explicit with his "Lusty Month of May." The WDR Funkhaus Orchestra is already preparing the May punch!

EPSG:4326

WDR 3 Lunch Concert: Spring Fever

WDR Funkhaus

The Mouse invites you to a big dance party! Because at this concert, you'll not only hear lively music, but you'll also have a real dance party. So – throw your arms in the air and look forward to a fantastic dance experience.

Dance with the mouse

Konzerthaus Dortmund

Kurhaus Wiesbaden GmbH

Thursday Concert No. 7 (2026)

Volkshaus Jena

“She is a statue of beauty when standing or sitting: grace itself when she moves,” the 18th century English writer and artist Horace Walpole wrote about the legendary Queen of France Marie Antoinette. This colourful character from French history inspired the ballet by the French choreographer Thierry Malandain that premiered with his own ensemble, Malandain Ballet Biarritz, in 2019 in the very theatre that Marie Antoinette inaugurated on 16 May 1770 to mark her wedding to Louis XVI: the Opéra Royal Château de Versailles.

Marie Antoinette’s life in Versailles is central to Malandain’s ballet, which the choreographer has created to music by two of her contemporaries – Joseph Haydn and Christoph Willibald Gluck. The piece depicts her arrival at court, her wedding day, the opening of the opera house with Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Persée – as a ballet within the ballet – the attempted escape that would ultimately be her undoing and the infamous parties and balls associated with the Queen.

Marie Antoinette

Volksoper Wien

Even though no “Brötzinger Saturday” is planned for 2025, the chamber orchestra will give a concert on the traditional date (last Saturday in September) in St. Martin’s Church, which is part of the city museum.

Under the direction of students from the conducting class of the University of Music and Performing Arts Frankfurt am Main (Prof. Johannes Schlaefli and Christoph Altstaedt), works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Gideon Klein and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy take us to the stars and to Swiss alpine pastures.

Of Alpine Pastures and Stars

Stadtmuseum Pforzheim

During the last week of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, the laureates withdraw to the Queen Elisabeth Chapel. Their final farewell to Belgian audiences comes in the form of the traditional laureates concert in the Queen Elisabeth Hall, during which they perform seminal milestones from the piano repertoire. Don’t miss this appointment with the future and an opportunity to see a new generation of star pianists at work after their defining performances during this world-renowned competition, before they embark on an international career!

Laureates' concert Queen Elisabeth Competition

Queen Elisabeth Hall

Concertgebouw Brugge

Centre for Fine Arts

Music Center De Bijloke

Cultuurcentrum Hasselt

Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ is a deep, contemplative drama based on the events leading up to the crucifixion and the earthquake that marked the moment of Jesus’s death. The music pulls us into an ominous and unsettled world; a lament at the foot of the cross. Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for strings is another lament, this time for the destruction wrought in Munich in World War II and the shattering of cultural life as the composer knew it. Full of loss and anguish – but also serenity and majesty – this is music for meditation and reflection this Good Friday.

Music for Good Friday

Ulster Hall

With composer, arranger and pianist Tobias Schwencke, the Ensemble Resonanz meets a good friend who has already merged the sound worlds of Franz Schubert and Nick Cave for "mercy seat - winter journey". Now they are devoting themselves to a silent film classic: "The Merry Widow" by Erich von Stroheim. In 1925, the legendary director shot his free adaptation of Franz Léhar's operetta "The Merry Widow", which is now accompanied by Tobias Schwencke's newly composed film music.

Merry widow

Wiener Konzerthaus

Imagine you could listen to Ludwig van Beethoven composing! Crawl into his cerebral convolutions. That’s exactly what Gerard McBurney’s radio play with live orchestra X-Rayed is about. Matthias Brandt has lent his voice to Ludwig van Beethoven: He wonders where to buy his coffee beans and when the piano tuner is coming. He muses about underwear and double counterpoint. And we are immersed in the acoustic world of Biedermeier Vienna with its coffee houses, its hackney carriages and Beethoven’s scratchy quill. An immersive sound experience in which we witness the genesis of the intoxicating Seventh Symphony: This was conceived by Gerard McBurney, the English composer, radio producer, educator and programme maker who has worked for and with the world’s most distinguished conductors since the 1990s: Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and, above all and for a long time: Pierre Boulez. For him, McBurney devised more than 70 »Children’s Concerts for Adults« over a ten-year period in Chicago. Multimedia concert experiences that opened the ears of the audience and left them speechless: Enchanted and enraptured by what they discovered new in seemingly familiar music. The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn enters into a live dialogue with the surround sound experience of McBurney’s radio play – an absolutely novel listening experience.

X-Rayed

Theater Bonn Opera House

It’s a Beethoven bonanza! To mark the 200th anniversary of the great composer’s death we present a very special two-day celebration of his music, when pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet takes on the incredible challenge of performing all five of Beethoven’s piano concertos – a superhuman feat of technique, musicality and endurance. Join Jean Efflam on this epic odyssey and don’t miss a note as you immerse yourself in Beethoven’s genius for reinvention, his revolutionary originality and his capacity to find the joy in life and in music.

Ulster Orchestra: The Piano Concertos

After performing Rachmaninov’s complete piano concertos with the HK Phil in Shenzhen in 2025, Van Cliburn Gold Medal winner and Avery Fisher Prize recipient Zhang Haochen returns to perform Brahms’s two piano concertos for Hong Kong audiences and kick off the Salute to Brahms series. Hailed by New York Arts as a “musician of extraordinary technical mastery and perception”, Zhang shares his profound affinity for Brahms through poetic pianism and commanding virtuosity, culminating in the monumental Second Piano Concerto, a masterpiece of singular structure, expansive emotional range and sweeping lyricism. The two splendid concerts open with two of Brahms’s early orchestral serenades, under rising star conductor Christoph Altstaedt.

Salute To Brahms – Piano Concertos

Hong Kong Cultural Centre

Discover how friendship and artistic exchanges inspired Brahms’s music-making. Written for his great friend – violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim – Brahms’s magnificent concerto is among the greatest and most challenging works in the repertoire. Kevin Zhu, first prize winner of the Paganini International Violin Competition, showcases youthful brilliance with “absolute virtuosity” (L’ape musicale) in his HK Phil debut. Sharing the stage is the HK Phil Chorus, expertly directed by Christoph Altstaedt, in two choral pieces: Nänie, written in memory of a painter friend, and Schicksalslied, inspired by a poem encountered during a visit to a friend. A one-night-only heavenly programme to close the series perfectly.

Salute to Brahms – Violin Concerto

After performing Rachmaninov’s complete piano concertos with the HK Phil in Shenzhen in 2025, Van Cliburn Gold Medal winner and Avery Fisher Prize recipient Zhang Haochen returns to perform Brahms’s two piano concertos. Hailed by New York Arts as a “musician of extraordinary technical mastery and perception”, Zhang shares his profound affinity for Brahms through poetic pianism and commanding virtuosity, culminating in the monumental Second Piano Concerto, a masterpiece of singular structure, expansive emotional range and sweeping lyricism. The two splendid concerts open with two of Brahms’s early orchestral serenades, under rising star conductor Christoph Altstaedt.

Conductor

Christoph Altstaedt

Events

Upcoming events

3 - 14 Nov, 2026

The Rite of Spring / House · Opéra National De Lyon

25 - 26 Feb, 2027

Ulster Orchestra: The Piano Concertos · Ulster Hall

Apr 30 - May 1, 2027

Salute To Brahms – Piano Concertos · Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

May 6, 2027

Salute to Brahms – Violin Concerto · Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

8 - 9 May, 2027

Shenzhen Concert – Salute to Brahms · Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Past events

3 - 14 Nov, 2026

The Rite of Spring / House · Opéra National De Lyon

May 22, 2026

WDR 3 Lunch Concert: Spring Fever · WDR Funkhausorchester

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 1 by Brahms

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 2 by Beethoven

Ulster Hall

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 1 by Beethoven

Ulster Hall

Conductor in Serenade No. 2 by Brahms

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor in Schicksalslied by Brahms

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor in Violin Concerto by Brahms

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor in Nänie by Brahms

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor in Serenade No. 1 by Brahms

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor in Symphony No. 7 by Beethoven

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Conductor in The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky

Opéra National De Lyon

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 2 by Brahms

Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 4 by Beethoven

Ulster Hall

Conductor in Metamorphosen by R.

Ulster Orchestra

Conductor in The Seven Last Words Of Christ by

Ulster Orchestra

Conductor in Symphony No. 10 in E Minor by Shostakovich

Jenaer Philharmonie

Conductor in Marie Antoinette by Gluck

Volksoper Wien

Conductor in Adagio und Fuge by Mozart

Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim

Conductor in Partita by Klein

Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim

Conductor in String Symphony in C major No. 9 "Swiss Symphony" by Bartholdy

Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482 by Mozar

Jenaer Philharmonie

About

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