Pavel Haas is one of a whole series of artists who, to this day, painfully remind us of the gaps the Nazis left with their campaign of extermination against Jewish life and culture. At the age of 14, Haas began his musical education at the Brno Music School and later studied for two years at Leoš Janáček's Conservatory. He worked as a music teacher and freelance composer before being deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in December 1941. There, in order to perfidiously maintain the appearance of normality, the Nazis started a "leisure activities" program that also included music. Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krása and Pavel Haas were among the composers who continued to compose in the midst of the unimaginable. As a contribution against forgetting, the memorial concert commemorates the unimaginable suffering of so many people.

Memories of Pavel Haas

Lehmbruck Museum

The quintet by Amy Marcy Beach, an important figure in American late Romanticism, begins in a romantic, luxuriant manner with lush melodies. She owes her fighting spirit to the fact that she even got this far. In the gloomy, puritanical life on the east coast of the USA, the highly gifted girl with perfect pitch had to learn to compose autodidactically. Mozart, another highly gifted young man, had it easier, and his quintet, in the then unusual all-string ensemble, is surrounded by a dark aura. Schubert's Opus 44, his first chamber music work with piano, then concludes the concert with explosive power, rich melodies and dazzling timbres.

Quintets

The horror is unimaginable: On October 7, 2023, the radical Islamic Hamas attacked Israel. In the south of the country, its members carried out a massacre, torturing and kidnapping defenseless civilians. As a result of the barbaric terrorist attack, a war broke out in the Gaza Strip, bringing immeasurable suffering to people on both sides. In memory of the day of the terrible attack, the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra is organizing a concert with Jewish music and Jewish artists - as a sign of solidarity and as a signal of hope. Because music can achieve what often seems unattainable in real life: people of different backgrounds and religions find each other in the intimate dialogue of chamber music, united in their devotion to a common cause: music.

Memorial concert

Philharmonie Mercatorhalle

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was his composition teacher; in addition to a symphony and a piano concerto, he himself wrote a variety of songs, chamber music, and piano works. Yet today, hardly anyone knows Georgi Catoire. To mark the 100th anniversary of his death on May 21, the program opens with his melancholic Piano Quintet in G minor, in which, despite all its originality, echoes of Johannes Brahms can also be heard. Brahms himself is also represented, with his symphonic-like Quintet in F minor. Interspersed with this piece is one of George Onslow's 34 string quintets: Harmonic richness and cantabile melodies characterize the work, in which the composer also achieves a special richness of sound through the instrumentation of cello and double bass.

Hyun-Hwa Park

Events

Upcoming events

Mar 12, 2026

Quintet discovery · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Past events

Apr 3, 2025

Memories of Pavel Haas · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Nov 14, 2024

Quintets · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Future and recently performed repertoire

Piano in String Quintet No. 26 by Onslow

Duisburger Philharmoniker

Piano in Piano Quintet by Catoire

Duisburger Philharmoniker

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