With Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Night Before Christmas" and Alexander Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances," this year's first Loh concert will also set the tone for the Christmas season. Both works exude joie de vivre and festive sonic splendor. This year's performance will once again bring a special touch of color to the ensemble from the prizewinners of the Sondershausen Carl Schroeder Competition, young musicians who already demonstrate masterful mastery of their instruments. Popular Christmas carols for sing-alongs will round out the evening.

1st Loh Concert

Octagonal House

Was George Frideric Handel a German composer or an English one? Well, one could also say: He was Italian! For in the four years he spent south of the Alps, he not only met the best musicians of his time, but also dabbled in important genres: opera, oratorio, cantata. One of these works is the cantata "Apollo e Dafne." The subject is piquant. It deals with male aggression. The god Apollo tries to win the nymph Daphne's affection by threatening him with violence. But she is wise and ultimately transforms into a laurel tree. Apollo's only option is to water it with his tears.

2nd Castle Concert

Sondershausen Castle

Miss H. is the girlfriend of the famous Norwegian composer Edward Grieg and a passionate cave explorer. If she hadn't got into trouble with the trolls on her last cave tour, she and the orchestra would not have been magically transported from the 19th century to the present day. Damn trolls! Will the children be able to help her get back to her time and the land of mythical creatures?

Orchestra Workshop II

Theater Nordhausen

House of Art

"Love is blind," is what is usually said. In Peter I. Tchaikovsky's last opera, "Iolanta," it is different: it is only love that makes the title heroine see. The young woman, daughter of the Provençal king René, has always been blind. But she knows nothing about it. In order to supposedly protect her, those around her keep this from her, as well as the fact that she is a princess. It is only a stranger who rescues her from her paradisiacal world of illusion: the Burgundian knight Vaudémont reveals to Iolanta that she is blind, thus initiating her healing process, at the end of which, through the power of love and thanks to her own strong will, she can finally see.

Jolanthe

The stage is set for all sorts of breakneck, virtuoso and comical performances by the various instrument groups and individual soloists of the Loh Orchestra. Julian Gaudiano leads the orchestra through a colorful program in which everyone can show off their craziest tricks and gimmicks, their sound confidence and instrumental mastery, and enter into a high-spirited musical competition. And just like in a real circus, the musical ring naturally includes funny animals and winking clowns.

carnival concert

Haus der Kunst

Do you like to make travel plans at the beginning of the year? Then let yourself be inspired by traveling composers who have translated their dream destinations, holiday oases and creative breaks into entertaining music. For our trip you don't have to get on the train or the car, you just need to come to our New Year's concert and off you go with Saint-Saëns to Aragon, with Rossini to Reims, with Johann Strauss to St. Petersburg or to the roses in the south. The Loh Orchestra, the baritone Florian Tavic and Julian Gaudiano will be your tour guides and will musically fuel your wanderlust.

New Year's Concert

Adventure Mine

Culture and Congress Center

Achteckhaus

Georges Bizet did not live to see the success of his last opera, "Carmen," as he died just a few months after its premiere, which took place in March 1875 at the Paris Opera-comique. At the time, there was a hail of harsh criticism: the title character, for example, was "obscene" in her unconditional love of freedom, an "incarnation of vice" and should be "banned by the police." The composer and his librettists portrayed the dramatic story of the spirited Spanish woman Carmen and her lover Don José in a drastic realism that was unusual for the time. Carmen, who loves her independence and does not allow herself to be taken over, increasingly frees herself from the possessive clutches of Don José. The latter is drawn into a fatal vortex of jealousy and mistrust.

Carmen

Romanticism has many facets, and some of the most beautiful can be heard here. The range extends from the stroke of genius of the 14-year-old Franz Schubert to the Spring Fantasy of the late Romantic Delius. As well as Schubert, Schumann, Grieg and Brahms are represented in our program with songs that the Swiss composer Fabian Müller has arranged for clarinet and string orchestra. The fifth of the once immensely popular serenades by Robert Fuchs will be heard at the end. Fuchs, the Viennese teacher of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and many others, pays homage to his colleague Johann Strauss in the last movement of his work - with quotes from "The Bat".

Heringer Castle Concert

Banquet Hall

After the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, Igor Levit recognizes "an explosion of anti-Semitism" and is stunned by the widespread silence, including in the cultural scene. He has already broken this silence with several benefit concerts and now wants to set another example together with TN LOS!.

»Against silence. Against anti-Semitism.

Blue Hall

The singer Orpheus loses his beloved wife Eurydice to the poisonous bite of a snake. With his singing he softens Hades, the god of the underworld, who then grants him access to the realm of the dead to be with his wife. Orpheus is allowed to accompany Eurydice back to life. But only on the condition that he does not look back at her on the way. But that is precisely what he does not manage!

Orpheus and Eurydice

Sondershausen Palace

This season, the Loh Orchestra will once again be giving open-air concerts in a relaxed atmosphere. The orchestra's performances have been a permanent fixture at the two major town festivals in Nordhausen and Sondershausen for years and are now indispensable. Musical delights in summer temperatures, with a cool drink or other delicacies, guarantee a special experience.


Coffee Concert for the Roland Festival

Petersberg

In this Loh concert we combine a promising musical program, open-air atmosphere and culinary delicacies to create a special evening. The overture to Gioacchino Rossini's opera "Il barbiere di Siviglia" exudes airy lightness, while Hector Berlioz explores the tragic facets of love in his famous song cycle. The expressive melodies and subtle instrumentation are unparalleled. The strings of the Loh Orchestra accompany the break in the open air in front of the octagon house with Mozart's famous serenade "Eine kleine Nachtmusik", during which you can also indulge in culinary delights.

4th Loh concert

Hardly any other rock band has achieved such lasting success as the Beatles. Our singers, accompanied by the Loh Orchestra, bring these golden years of pop history back to life on the Nordhausen stage. Under the motto "All You Need Is Love", visitors can expect an unforgettable evening full of highlights such as "Yesterday", "Strawberry Fields" and "A Hard Day's Night". Not only die-hard Beatles fans will be thrilled!

The Beatles in Concert

Entertainment and knowledge transfer are possible with our workshop formats! In these 60-minute morning performances, we present a current production from our theater. Through interviews with the artists involved, the audience learns exciting things about the background of the piece, interesting facts about work processes in the theater and the process of creating a production. The overall theater experience is rounded off by a large excerpt from the original production.

Opera workshop “Romeo et Juliette”

Together with musical stars Eve Rades (most recently in "Doctor Zhivago") and Tobias Joch ("Addams Family"), the Loh Orchestra dedicates itself to the big and small wishes and dreams of the most diverse film and musical characters from cartoons, feature films and musicals. Whether their protagonists move around in the jungle, under water, in ice, desert or fantasy worlds, their songs and duets are always the emotional highlights of the stories. Ariel, Aladdin, Elsa, the Beauty or Simba and all their names dream of love, a better life, wealth and much more. We invite young and old to lose themselves with us in these happy dreams.

Josepha Vogelhuber, landlady of the "White Horse Inn" on the Austrian Wolfgangsee, has the well-being of her guests at heart. Above all, that of her regular guest Dr. Siedler, a distinguished lawyer from Berlin, to whom she has fallen in love. He, however, is interested in the young Ottilie, which in turn pleases Josepha's head waiter Leopold Brandmeyer, because he only has eyes for his boss. In the idyllic Austrian holiday resort, there are a number of emotional turbulences, which an important visitor is able to resolve so skilfully that everyone ends up with a happy ending.

Im weissen Rössl

Culture and Convention Center Meininger Hof

The flower shop owner Mr. Mushnik is losing customers because his shop has little to offer other than wilted flowers. He wants to close it down. But then his employee Seymour comes up with a special breed that is a carnivorous plant. As soon as it is placed in the window, the plant becomes an attraction. But it is demanding. Seymour initially feeds it blood, but at some point this is no longer enough for the ever-growing plant. It demands human flesh. In the end, Seymour is not the only victim of his own breed...

Little Shop of Horrors

Small ensemble - great sound imagination. Mozart ensures that this formula works when he conjures up a wealth of tones with just a few instruments in his B major symphony of 1779. Alessandro Marcello's oboe concerto is tailored entirely to the soloist. The second movement in particular, with its touching cantilena, is very popular, also thanks to Johann Sebastian Bach's adaptation into a harpsichord concerto. Marcello's contemporary Arcangelo Corelli gets by completely without wind instruments in his famous Christmas concert. Here it is the lively interplay between soloists and tutti that provides variety. Edward Elgar's String Serenade in E minor op. 20 forms a romantic, yearning haven of calm within the program.

As the fairy Carabosse is not invited to little Aurora's baptism, she puts a curse on the child: the girl is to prick herself on a spindle on her 16th birthday and die. Thanks to a good fairy, however, this misfortune is mitigated. Aurora does not die, but falls into a deep sleep from which she only awakens 100 years later with a kiss from Prince Désiré. She is happily reunited with him for life and the story ends with a happy ending.

Sleeping Beauty

Theater Rudolstadt im Stadthaus

This year, we're accompanying the Advent season with Italian Baroque music, inviting our audience to enjoy some contemplative, relaxed hours. Rina Hirayama will sing Christmas pieces by such well-known composers as Antonio Vivaldi, as well as lesser-known contemporaries such as Domenico Zipoli and Alessandro Stradella, who was able to imbue his music with such vocal brilliance thanks in part to his own vocal talent. In the second half of the concert, we'll switch to Russian sounds with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Night Before Christmas" and Alexander Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances," thus shifting from an intimate chamber music atmosphere to a festive sonic splendor. Popular Christmas carols for sing-alongs will round off the evening.

Christmas concert

Without music, many movies wouldn't be nearly as exciting, emotional, and humorous as they are with it. Music powerfully draws us into emotional worlds, adds even more thrill to the crooks' activities, and sometimes "knows" more than the characters in the story. Our concert features songs and music from animated films, blockbusters, and famous film sagas, offering something for every taste. We guarantee you'll leave with more than just a catchy tune stuck in your head!

Film music concert

The dialogue between eras has always been a source of artistic fascination. The musical language of Giovanni Pergolesi, W.A. Mozart, and their contemporaries found an echo in the neoclassical period of the early 20th century. In his "Antiche danze ed aria," Ottorino Respighi referenced lute pieces from the early and high Baroque periods, including those by Jean-Baptiste Besard and Ludovico Roncalli, which he adapted to the classical string sound. Igor Stravinsky, on the other hand, specifically sought out Pergolesi's works for his "Pulcinella" ballet, allowing him to freely adapt them. With the minor flaw that, as it later turned out, most of these pieces were apparently by other masters...

Julian Gaudiano

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 23 - Dec 14, 2025

2nd Castle Concert · Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Dec 21, 2025

Christmas concert · Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Feb 22 - May 23, 2026

Film music concert · Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Jun 3, 2026

4th Loh Concert · Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Past events

Dec 3, 2025

1st Loh Concert · Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Nov 23 - Dec 14, 2025

2nd Castle Concert · Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky

Theater Nordhausen

Conductor in Agrippina by Handel

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Conductor in Carmen by Bizet

Theater Nordhausen

Conductor in Antiche danze et arie per liuto by Respighi

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Conductor in Symphony No. 38 by Mozart

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Conductor in overture to "Il barbiere di Siviglia" by Rossini

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Conductor in Preludio on “La revoltosa by Chapi

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Conductor in “El amor brujo”, One-act ballet with singing by Falla

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Conductor in L'Olimpiade by Pergolesi

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

Conductor in Apollo e Dafne by Handel

Loh-Orchester Sondershausen

About

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