Conductor

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!

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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

“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

Thursday Concert No. 7 (2026)

Volkshaus Jena

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

WDR Funkhaus

Konzerthaus Dortmund

Kurhaus Wiesbaden GmbH

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!

Conductor

Christoph Altstaedt

Events

Upcoming events

Dec 20, 2025 - Apr 5, 2026

Marie Antoinette · Volksoper Wien

Mar 19, 2026

Thursday Concert No. 7 (2026) · Jenaer Philharmonie

Mar 27 - Jun 28, 2026

Dance with the mouse · WDR Funkhausorchester

May 22, 2026

WDR 3 Lunch Concert: Spring Fever · WDR Funkhausorchester

Past events

Sep 27, 2025

Of Alpine Pastures and Stars · Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim

7 - 11 Jun, 2025

Laureates' concert Queen Elisabeth Competition · Antwerp Symphony Orchestra

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Symphony No. 7 by Beethoven

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

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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