Hardly any other composer of the 20th century remained as committed to the sound language of late Romanticism in his work as Sergei Rachmaninoff. With this approach, he created works that still speak to us today with their emotional density, melodic richness and tangible drama. The crystallization point of his work is the series of his piano concertos and symphonies. When Gabriel Feltz puts these very works on the program in his last three concerts as General Music Director on a single day, it is possible to follow Rachmaninoff's creative development in concentrated form. This reveals the enormous range of expressive worlds between euphoria, pathos, thoughtfulness, sensitivity and deep dejection in which Rachmaninoff moved in his music.

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10th Philharmonic Concert: Rachmaninoff total

Konzerthaus Dortmund

After Siegfried and Brünnhilde have happily found each other, the hero sets out on "new deeds". Brünnhilde, who remains behind, receives the Ring of the Nibelung as a token of love from her lover. But Hagen, a descendant of the Gibichung family, also wants to get his hands on the cursed ring that his father Alberich once forged. Siegfried's naivety plays into his hands: he cunningly gives Siegfried a potion that makes him forget everything, causing him to lose all his memories of Brünnhilde. In this state, he cruelly abuses his former wife, who then seeks revenge. Hagen is prepared to murder Siegfried in order to finally get his hands on the ring...

Götterdämmerung

Opernhaus Dortmund

Can an insider tip be a milestone? The works in this concert prove it. Bela Bartók is one of those composers who are performed far too rarely in our region - not even such solitary creative highlights as the music for string instruments, percussion and celesta . Folklorism and avant-garde, construction and expressivity, excited motor movement and shocking emotional climaxes - all of this is brought into a unique balance in the work. At the same time, Bartók also reinvented the sound of strings, which is reflected in the unusual title. The half-hour work, which even despises 20th century music, was an unprecedented triumph for Bartók at its premiere and was performed around fifty times in ten different countries within a year. Since then, it has been considered a cult piece of modernism.

9th Philharmonic Concert: Insider tip

The naive Siegfried grows up as an orphan with the loveless and greedy blacksmith Mime, with only the remains of a sword left by his unknown father. At some point, his curiosity about his own origins and identity becomes too great, and after fearlessly and naively reforging his father's wonderfully strong sword, he sets off. Mime had convinced him that he must learn to fear in order to survive in the world - preferably from the dragon worm Fafner, who lives in a forest cave on a valuable treasure, including the powerful, eponymous ring. But with his carefree nature, Siegfried masters the episode effortlessly and wins the treasure. What's more: after he accidentally comes across the dragon's blood, he can suddenly understand the language of animals! This is how he comes to a rock surrounded by fire, where he finds a sleeping woman, Brünnhilde, who can only be awakened by the most fearless and free hero. For the first time, Siegfried feels fear – but it quickly turns into love!

Siegfried

It is about a pair of siblings who have lost each other and then find each other again. It is about incestuous love, adultery and affairs. It is about power and intrigue. But it is also about love, trust and the search for happiness. And it is about a ring that represents the future of the world. Richard Wagner's Die Walküre begins as a simple love triangle in which two people fall in love and a third suffers. But as the opera progresses, the deeper dimension of this entanglement becomes apparent and the perspective broadens beyond the purely human. It is nothing less than a part of the global epic The Ring of the Nibelung , which Richard Wagner created with Die Walküre .

Die Walküre

There is no other symphony like this: two inner movements entitled "Night Music". As unusual as these movement titles are in a symphony, the characters of these two movements are just as unique. The first "Night Music" can be understood as a kind of nighttime walk, mixed with natural sounds such as birdsong and cowbells; the second is an idyllic serenade, in which the guitar and mandolin also have their say.

7th Philharmonic Concert: Song of the Night

Accompanied by a slowly swelling E-flat major chord, in the prelude to Das Rheingold a mythical cosmos rises from the depths of the Rhine, from whose waves a world populated by gods, giants and dwarves arises: Cursing love, the Nibelung Alberich procures the legendary gold of the Rhine maidens in order to forge a ring from it that gives its owner limitless power. When Wotan and Loge cunningly steal the valuable piece from him, Alberich places a curse on the ring, the fateful consequences of which ignite the further events of Der Ring des Nibelungen ...

Das Rheingold

With a total running time of around 16 hours, Richard Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung is one of the most monumental epics that the opera stage has ever seen. Is it therefore even possible to tell this gigantic stage festival in a single evening? Absolutely! The German humorist Loriot made it possible and masterfully captured the essence of the drama in just a few words: "The perpetrators in the most powerful drama in music history are actually very nice people. Only one shared passion is their undoing: they want to own more than they can afford, more power than they are entitled to. In a blind, loveless pursuit of profit, they destroy themselves and their world. ... Fortunately, such things only happen on the opera stage."

The Ring in One Evening

Inspired by the Babylon Berlin series about Inspector Gereon Rath from Volker Kutscher's novels, the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and General Music Director Gabriel Feltz invite you to a journey back in time to the 1920s and 1930s at the start of the year. It is about the music in the variety shows and cabarets and the way the soundscape of the big city, from the pub and the boulevard to the opium den and the brothel, has found expression in the music. It reflects the attitude to life in a time of crisis, which moves between intoxication and depression and is marked by the hectic pace of everyday life as well as the search for happiness. The colorful program includes two Dortmund audience favorites, Kammersänger Morgan Moody and Patricia Meeden, who not only vouch for musical quality, but also guarantee a great stage show.

New Year's Concert: Berlin – The Roaring Twenties

The two symphonies in the program reflect a world on the brink in a deeply impressive way. Benjamin Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem was written in 1940, shortly after the start of the Second World War. The symphony is a confessional work. The convinced pacifist Britten, then just 27 years old, takes a stand against the war in it as clearly "as possible". The reference to the Requiem, the funeral service in the Catholic liturgy, is expressed in the titles of the three movements of the compactly designed symphony, even without Britten calling in a choir or solo voices. The piece describes an arc that leads from mourning and a dance of death protesting against the madness of war to the rapturous calm in the last movement, "Requiem aeternam."

4th Philharmonic Concert: Am Abgrund

February 11, 1918 went down in music history as a milestone: the triumphant performance of the Fontane di Roma (The Fountains of Rome) under the conductor Arturo Toscanini brought the name of the composer Ottorino Respighi into the music world and at the same time proved that Italians could actually compose orchestral music. Until then, it had been an iron law that important Italian music could not exist without singing. With Respighi, there was once again a creator of orchestral works of European stature - for the first time since the Baroque period!

2nd Philharmonic Concert: Roma aeterna – Eternal Rome

Three days before Halloween, the Dortmund Philharmonic transforms the concert hall into a haunted house: This season's Hollywood hits are all about horror films. The nerve-racking pounding in John Carpenter's Halloween , the piercing knife stabs of the strings in the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho , lots of pieces that create an eerie atmosphere - there is no shortage of wonderful material for an evening of music from horror films. Finally, a concert in which insane murderers, witches, slashers, vampires, monsters and those possessed by the devil also get their musical due.

Gabriel Feltz

Events

Past events

Jun 15, 2025

10th Philharmonic Concert: Rachmaninoff total · Dortmunder Philharmoniker

May 18 - Jun 8, 2025

Götterdämmerung · Theater Dortmund

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 1 by Rachmaninoff

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Symphony No. 4 by Shostakovich

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 3 by Rachmaninoff

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Symphony No. 7 by Mahler

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Symphony No. 6 by Bruckner

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Sinfonia da Requiem by Britten

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Götterdämmerung by Wagner

Theater Dortmund

Conductor in Die Walküre by Wagner

Theater Dortmund

Conductor in Piano Concerto No. 2 by Rachmaninoff

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Das Rheingold by Wagner

Theater Dortmund

Conductor in Fontane di Roma by Respighi

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Pini di Roma by Respighi

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Conductor in Siegfried by Wagner

Theater Dortmund

Conductor in Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta by Bartók

Dortmunder Philharmoniker

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