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

Do you remember your favorite (picture) book from back in the day? Were you inspired by "Struwwelpeter," "Urmel," or perhaps "Max and Moritz"? The musicians of the Duisburg Philharmonic will bring their childhood treasures to the City Library. In addition to reading excerpts from their favorite books, they will present individual and loving musical interpretations of the stories. Young and old are invited to listen to the words and music together, discover new things, or rediscover familiar ones.

Listen to a book

Duisburg City Library

In the 2024/2025 season, Thomas Enhco already explored "Transatlantic Sound Worlds" with the Duisburg Philharmonic. And in his return, the artist proves himself to be an accomplished wanderer between musical worlds, equally at home in jazz and the classical repertoire. Both influences flow into his new program, "Mozart Paradox." "Mozart has accompanied me since childhood," recalls Thomas Enhco. "As a jazz musician, however, I had never before resorted to his work to improvise, as I often did with Bach, Brahms, or Schumann." And the versatile musician is now changing that with a project entirely dedicated to the work of the Salzburg prodigy. For this project, he has compiled a personal selection of popular works—including the "Lacrimosa" from the famous Requiem, the overture to the opera "Don Giovanni," and the eerily beautiful clarinet concerto—on which he can improvise with complete freedom. He wants to "consider the essence of Mozart's music through the prism of jazz" and explore the paradoxes in Mozart's emotional world: "tragedy and humor, exuberant joy and profound sadness, childlike mischief and reflections on death."

Mozart Paradox

CityPalais

With the 6th Symphony, Gustav Mahler composed perhaps his darkest work. Right from the beginning, the music pounding away in a dark, threatening march rhythm. Fortunately, in the turbulent atmosphere of his "Tragic" Symphony, the composer grants us at least brief moments of calm: small, idyllic islands to catch our breath. In the first movement, it is the herd bells of the cows on the alpine pastures. For Mahler, they represent the last sounds he heard on his numerous walks in the mountains – before "heavenly" peace surrounded him on the summit. In the sublimely beautiful string lyric of the slow movement, we then hear a painfully beautiful declaration of love to his wife Alma. But this brief moment of happiness is short-lived; catastrophe strikes relentlessly in the finale. The three resounding hammer blows have repeatedly been associated with the composer's personal blows: the end of his career as director of the Vienna Court Opera, the diagnosis of a serious heart condition, and the death of his daughter. And so this tragic symphony ends in utter hopelessness. After exploring transatlantic soundscapes twice last season, Alondra de la Parra delves into the dark depths of Mahler's symphonic cosmos this time.

Tragic

A moderated, interactive live concert for young people, designed to fascinate the eyes, ears, and senses alike. Since when has music existed? When did the first orchestras emerge? What does the Eurovision Song Contest actually have to do with classical music? Why is George Frideric Handel the true superstar of the Champions League—and why does the slow movement from Joseph Haydn's "Emperor Quartet" sound so familiar? A string quartet from the Duisburg Philharmonic will take young people on an exciting journey through music history, designed to whet their appetite for classical music. The enthusiasm is contagious, and potential risks and side effects are (jokingly!) pointed out in advance.

phil4teens

Stadt Duisburg

Oh dear: The Flute-playing Beast is visiting his little brother, and he's been up to a lot of mischief in the theater! Now he's disappeared, too! The five musicians – two trumpets, horn, trombone, and tuba – are desperately searching for more than just their music for the concert! The exciting detective work begins – and with the help of all the audience members, big and small, hopefully the little Flute-playing Beast will return to the concert hall!

Approach to train

Theater Duisburg

Following the premiere of the "Shakespeare Monologues" in the 3rd Philharmonic Concert, Sylvain Cambreling returns to Duisburg for a guest performance. This time he will conduct the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the resident orchestra of the magnificent Laeiszhalle, where he has been chief conductor since 2018. His program includes two Viennese classics: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose genius is particularly evident in his piano concertos, in addition to his operas with their deeply felt character portraits. No. 23 in A major is one of the later concertos composed in Vienna. It was written concurrently with his work on "The Marriage of Figaro." The final movement, with its agitated parlando, is reminiscent of Mozart's great operatic finales. The solo part will be performed by the Argentinian pianist Nelson Goerner, who has already performed in Duisburg as a chamber musician with a Brahms piano quartet. A few years after Mozart, Beethoven also went to Vienna to receive "Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands," as his Bonn patron, Count von Waldstein, wished. The "Pastorale," composed in Vienna, is one of the most famous pieces of program music—with its bird calls, a violent storm with piccolo lightning and timpani thunder, as well as shepherds' song. A typical Cambreling program, in fact, known for its multifaceted concert dramaturgy.

Hamburg Symphony Orchestra

Diana Tishchenko likely still has fond memories of her last performance with the Duisburg Philharmonic : In June 2024, the Ukrainian-born violinist, who was born in Crimea, played a violin concerto by the Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych – and received enthusiastic applause from the audience for this politically powerful statement. Now she returns as a chamber musician and, together with her piano partner José Gallardo, who returns after his Duisburg debut in the 2024/2025 season, will present European composers who have played with the soundscape of America. The Frenchman Ravel incorporated elements of jazz, which was still new and exciting at the time, into his violin sonata. Jazz harmonies and sophisticated rhythms can also be heard in the concert fantasy that Igor Frolov compiled on themes from George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess," including the catchy tune "Summertime." César Franck, for his part, composed his violin sonata—still a classic in the repertoire today—as a wedding gift for the Belgian violin virtuoso and fellow composer Eugène Ysaÿe. Ysaÿe, too, dedicated his sonata to a famous colleague: the Romanian composer George Enescu, with whom he once performed together.

Sound worlds between Europe and America

It's a shame the composers can't meet in person this evening. It would certainly be entertaining to hear what the antipodes Brahms and Wagner would have to say to each other. While the musical theater reformer, who landed his first international hit with "Tannhäuser" in 1845, and the symphonists world-famous not only for his "Hungarian Dances" treated each other with at most mild malice, there had been a proverbial blowout between Brahms and Hugo Wolf. Brahms' attacks on his older colleague, which Wolf regularly published thereafter, were often amused to recount to his friends. But regardless of what one thought of the other, what one heard were nothing but masterpieces.

Pretty best enemies

The classic trio line-up actually consists of violin, cello, and piano. When Robert August Kahn presented his publisher with a Trio Serenade for oboe, horn, and piano, the publisher insisted on a version for a standard piano trio. The composer subsequently created no fewer than nine different versions of the serenade, each with its own distinctive sound. In the Profile concerto, it is the sometimes warm and full, sometimes clear and metallic sound of the horn that joins the piano and violin. We also hear this sound in the trio by Frédéric Duvernoy, one of the most famous French horn players around 1800, and in the "Premier Grand Trio" by Carl Czerny. All three offer the opportunity to encounter rarely performed but highly charming works.

Trio with horn

After the New Year's Concert with Beethoven's 9th Symphony, including the jubilant "Ode to Joy," Stefan Blunier , a regular and welcome guest in Duisburg, returns to the podium of the Philharmonic a few months later for a no less overwhelming symphony: Anton Bruckner's 7th Symphony, a tremendous cathedral of sound and a moving reaction to the death of Richard Wagner, whom he admired and for him the "blessed, ardently beloved immortal master." Before this mighty work with its overwhelming aesthetic, the program features a piece that Carl-Sönje Montag describes with the words "virtuosity, elegance, and joy." He is actually the deputy principal bassoonist of the Duisburg Philharmonic, but for this concert he switches sides and stands as soloist in front of the orchestra. The first movement is "inviting and downright life-affirming," says Montag, "with its virtuoso passages and large interval leaps; the final rondo is folksy and humorous," while in the slow middle movement, "the cantable bassoonist's soul is allowed to sing out in melodic arches reminiscent of Hummel's teacher, Mozart." In short: for Carl-Sönje Montag, the piece is one of the three most important bassoon concertos in the Classical-Romantic repertoire, alongside those of Carl Maria von Weber and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—not bad company.

Overwhelming

With Bijayini Satpathy, curator Kamalini Mukherji has invited a very special guest to the opening of the "Music of Now - Eigenzeit" festival in Duisburg. Through dancing, research, and teaching, the artist has been involved with the classical Indian dance form Odissi since her childhood – and indeed, it would be hard to find anyone more qualified to illuminate the background of this millennia-old art form, which was only rediscovered in the 20th century, with such insight as Bijayini Satpathy. Her first stop in Duisburg will be the Lehmbruck Museum, where she will offer insights into the practice and theory of Odissi in a lecture demonstration. Bijayini Satpathy will pay particular attention to the fluid gender roles so typical of a dance form in which the female parts are often performed by men and the male parts by women. One thing is already certain: anyone who is already looking forward to Bijayini Satpathy's festival appearance on May 2nd will likely be looking forward to the evening in the Gebläsehalle in the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord with even greater enthusiasm after the event at the Lehmbruck Museum.

Transcending Gender and Self in Odissi Dance

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

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