Humans have always been fascinated by the moon, and this mystical, pale celestial body has inspired artists of all genres. The mysterious moon and the moonstruck Pierrot are the main characters in "Mondestrunken": Alongside Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire," a prologue and three interludes conjure the moonlit night—with music, scenes, texts, songs, and poems ranging from the poetically contemplative to the cheerfully frivolous. These include the poem "Mondesaufgang" (Moonrise) by the writer and composer Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Robert Schumann's ethereally beautiful "Mondnacht" (Mond Night), and Johann Abraham Peter Schulz's famous musical setting of "Der Mond ist aufgegangen" (The Moon Has Risen).

Moon-drunk

Lehmbruck Museum

Antonín Dvořák used a popular folk dance and a song that is now sung as the Czech national anthem as themes in his overture “My Home” – a partly lyrical, partly fast-paced declaration of love for his homeland.

The connection to Slavic folk music can also be heard in the 1952 Rhapsody Concerto by Dvořák's Czech compatriot Bohuslav Martinů, which is one of the most frequently played viola concertos of the 20th century.

symphony concert

Theater Duisburg

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

At the Duisburg Philharmonic's winter concert, candles and string sounds compete for glory - this time in a particularly festive musical setting, when works by Italian baroque composers and contemporary colleagues from the north are performed. The dance sequence from Henry Purcell's stage spectacle "The Fairy-Queen" is already very varied. And while it is not only the spherical "Air" that enchants in Bach's 3rd orchestral suite, selected concerti grossi by Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli and Pietro Locatelli testify to the inventiveness and melodic seductive power of these masters.

Baroque Concert in the Light

“Rejoice, be glad”: With his “Christmas Oratorio”, Johann Sebastian Bach created his great Christmas classic for the church. The festive music also comes into its own in the Duisburg Opera Foyer, where highlights from it can be heard. In addition, the Capella Fluviale, the baroque ensemble of the Duisburg Philharmonic, and their guest singers will present a program from the time period of the great Thomaskantor, from Heinrich Schütz's “Small Sacred Concerts” to atmospheric works by Georg Friedrich Händel, Jean-Marie Leclair, Gaetano Maria Schiassi, Dieterich Buxtehude, Gregor Joseph Werner and Michel Corrette. Speaking of classics: traditional Christmas carols are of course not to be missed at this meeting of song and word.

Christmas in Song and Word

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

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.

Quintet discovery

Where streams of tourists now flock, artistic activity reigned for centuries. Outstanding composers such as Giovanni Gabrieli and Francesco Usper, as church musicians around 1600, used the galleries of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice to experiment with the new concept of polyphony. Musical successors such as Baldassare Galuppi and Antonio Lotti, also major figures in Venetian music history, were often no less experimental. In the serenade concert of the Duisburg Philharmonic and their guest Frithjof Smith, their works enter into dialogue with those of lesser-known, yet all the more worthy masters—naturally, in historically informed performance practice.

Mathias Feger

Events

Upcoming events

Mar 12, 2026

Quintet discovery · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Jun 5, 2026

2nd Serenade Concert · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Past events

Oct 2, 2025

Moon-drunk · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Apr 13, 2025

symphony concert · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Future and recently performed repertoire

Viola in String Quintet No. 26 by Onslow

Duisburger Philharmoniker

Viola in Piano Quintet by Catoire

Duisburger Philharmoniker

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