Duisburg is set to become a bustling hub of musical and cultural activity with an eclectic mix of events that promise to captivate audiences. From timeless operas like 'La traviata' to innovative concert meditations and thought-provoking memorials for artists, the city is celebrating music in all its forms. The Deutsche Oper am Rhein and the Duisburger Philharmoniker are at the forefront, bringing a range of performances that delve into operatic classics, childhood literature in musical form, and poignant tributes to historical composers.

Duisburg's Diverse Musical Extravaganza: Opera, Concerts, and Innovative Performances

Mathias Feger

Duisburger Philharmoniker

Music touches the soul, and regardless of cognitive or physical limitations, enjoying music together is almost always possible. In dementia-related changes, music can play a key role, providing access where language no longer can. It can evoke memories and appeal to everyone's emotions equally. "Heart Music" offers a relaxing hour for those affected, their relatives, caregivers, and the whole family. The concerts take place in the barrier-free foyer of the Philharmonie Mercatorhalle and are particularly suitable for music lovers who need assistance or simply want to enjoy a concert in the afternoon.

Heart music

Philharmonic Mercatorhalle, foyer

Cast off! With a total of five bows and 20 strings on board, the Duisburg Philharmonic String Quintet embarks on a grand pirate adventure – two violins, a viola, a cello, and a double bass on a grand piratical voyage. But beware: Wild storms and other dangers lurk on the open sea. It's good to have an attentive audience on their side to cheer them on. Anyone who wants to join them can look forward not only to great music, but also to a real pirate feast.

A-string to pluck

Theater Duisburg

As children, the Mendelssohn siblings were inseparable: they took lessons together, made music together, and shared composing tips. While her brother Felix had every opportunity, Fanny had to fight against the conventions of her time, which were not particularly friendly towards women composers. Fortunately, she did not let this deter her and, alongside her family obligations, always cultivated her musical talent and composed diligently. These include songs such as "Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh" (There is peace above all summits) based on a text by Goethe and the Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 11. With works like these, as well as excerpts from correspondence and statements by contemporaries, the program paints a fascinating portrait of Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn, playing period instruments.

The happy fisherwoman

Lehmbruck Museum

The Folkwang University of the Arts is visiting Duisburg: This means lively teaching and learning, exceptional concert series, master classes, and regular musical events throughout the year.

Final concert of the 2025/2026 master class

Folkwang University of the Arts

Concert hall or club? That's not always an easy decision at BEAT, the Duisburg Philharmonic's somewhat different concert series. As previously at the Mercatorhalle, the Trio Repercussion will once again present a program this season in which virtuoso playing on classical percussion instruments merges into the driving force of rousing club sounds. Dancing is the order of the day – but this time the ensemble will take the clash of clubbing, philharmonic, and ballet to the extreme. Famous for his outstanding physical expressiveness, Japanese dancer Wataru Shimizu, a long-time soloist with the Aalto Ballet Essen, will be joining Repercussion at its invitation to put his skills to use in a breathtaking live performance of his own songs at the interface between neo-classical music, electronic music, and drums. He will be artistically supported not only by the energetic vibes of the music and the visuals of VJ SAW, but also by other high-ranking ballet colleagues, whose names have not yet been confirmed. But one thing is certain: This evening will not only get you pumped on stage, but also in front of it.

Beat #09

CityPalais

Baroque music meets modernity, yesterday meets today: one of Johann Sebastian Bach's famous "Brandenburg Concertos," for example, meets Isang Yun's "Inventions for Two Oboes." Unlike Bach's inventions, however, the Korean composer's primary concern is with special playing techniques, such as trills and glissandi. And while Handel uses the Baroque concerto form, Klaus Huber wrote his "Noctes intelligibilis lucis" only in 1961, but scored it for the harpsichord, an instrument typical of the Baroque period. Thus, the program plays with sounds, forms, and ensembles, creating connections across eras.

Baroque shapes, modern colors

At the end of 2022, Roderick Cox made his acclaimed debut with the Duisburg Philharmonic, and now the orchestra and conductor are continuing their successful collaboration. For his return to the Ruhr region, the American conductor has programmed Richard Strauss's "Ein Heldenleben," a kind of musical self-portrait of the self-confident composer. In this symphonic poem, the hero falls in love, defies his critics, and, after a successful battle, carries out his work of peace before withdrawing from the world. Strauss's "Heldenleben" is sonically and visually powerful, but it has also brought him accusations of self-glorification. Before the late Romantic, another titan, Ludwig van Beethoven, appears on the program: his fifth and final piano concerto is in the "heroic" key of E-flat major and takes the solo concerto into equally sonicly powerful symphonic territory. With brutal chords, the piano and orchestra vie for the upper hand right from the start, while the solo instrument is allowed to sing its soulful sigh in the second movement with a beautiful melody. This is in the very best hands with Boris Giltburg , who was Artist in Residence in Duisburg during the 2017/2018 season: The world-class pianist has not only recorded all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas, but also his five piano concertos. A true Beethoven expert, then!

Hero's Life

Cameron Carpenter is both a pop star and a bird of paradise. For years, the dazzling organist has thrilled audiences around the world with the traveling organ he specially designed. But during the coronavirus pandemic, it was irreparably damaged. Over ten years ago, the keyboard virtuoso made his "Toccata" debut in Duisburg, and now, after a long absence, he returns to the magnificent Eule organ in the Philharmonie Mercatorhalle. Yet he remains true to his penchant for the unusual, playing the Goldberg Variations, a work written by Johann Sebastian Bach for a two-manual "clavicimbel"—or harpsichord for short. To this day, this enigmatic cycle remains one of the pinnacles of piano literature: 30 variations, some of which pose horrendous technical challenges and offer tremendous expressive depth, based on an "aria" of timeless beauty. Before Bach's masterpiece, as a kind of prelude, Cameron Carpenter plays one of the three chorales composed by César Franck shortly before his death in 1890, which are considered the pinnacle of his organ output. Originally written for the magnificent organ in the Parisian church of Sainte-Clotilde, where Franck served not only as Kapellmeister but also as organist.

Summit points

Duisburg has many voices, but they come together in a particularly colorful and vibrant way in the Marxloh district – a place that is largely shaped by the culture of migrant communities.

Marxloh Music Circus

Apotheke Pollmann-Eck

With 55 young singers, the Kinderchor am Rhein performs in numerous opera productions on the major stages of the Düsseldorf Opera House and the Duisburg Theater. In the 2025/2026 season, they can be seen in Giacomo Puccini's operas "Turandot" and "Tosca," as well as as a multi-voiced Pinocchio collective in the family opera "Pinocchio" by Marius Schötz and Marthe Meinhold. Furthermore, the youngest voices of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein have scheduled a musical summer celebration with an ensemble from the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra! With songs from around the world, sacred works, and pop melodies, the Kinderchor am Rhein will present a Sunday concert for the whole family.

klasse.klassik invites you: Summer Concert

The Indian-American pianist Kunal Lahiry is known for his unique concert concepts. Under the title "trans*Winterreise," for example, he has retold Schubert's song cycle from the perspective of a queer identity. And the program he has compiled for his debut in Duisburg also follows a dramatic idea. "Journey to Softness," according to the artist, "takes Ligeti's 'L'escalier du diable' and Beethoven's late Piano Sonata Op. 110 as musical pillars to simulate the paradigm shift between the patriarchal 'staircase'—its relentless order—and the fugue as a symbol of queer liberation." Lahiry begins his concert with a movement from Alexander Scriabin's Piano Sonata No. 4, music full of "purity, bliss, and unadulterated, cosmic beauty." But Ligeti interrupts "what should have been an ecstatic conclusion to the sonata." What follows, he says, is an attempt to unlearn the conditioned movements required by this "staircase." Crumb, Glass, and Berio then "suggest hesitation and moments of fragility." Ravel's "Une barque sur l'océan" and Lachenmann's "Guero" introduce "water and sounds as interruptions, countering the rigid mechanics of the staircase with fluidity and rupture. Through the use of water as a transformative element, one ultimately arrives at the state of fugue"—in the third movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31. "Karma Police" by the British rock band Radiohead "functions as the final folding of the abstract into the personal, where irony and protest meet."

journey to softness

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

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