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

Akiko Suwanai

José Gallardo

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

For the fourth time, the Duisburg Philharmonic and its guests, together with Ludger Engels, are developing three concert performances for the special exhibitions at the Küppersmühle Museum. In the nine editions of the series, which has become a cult classic and whose three performances are now each being performed twice due to high demand, the Philharmonic, with more than 40 guests from music, theater, and dance, have created new levels of experience from the themes and content of the exhibited works. In the next three concert performances, sound interventions will provide audible insights into the works of the Küppersmühle's unique Ströher Collection, as well as the backgrounds of the respective artists and their inspirations.

Concerts at the Küppersmühle Museum

Museum Küppersmühle

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

CityPalais

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

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

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

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

Around 20 kilometers from the Philharmonie Mercatorhalle lies the Folkwang University of the Arts, one of the most renowned musical talent factories in the German university landscape. Henri Sigfridsson, a Finnish musician, has been a professor there since 2011, fostering musical excellence in the next generation. He is also a successful pianist, performing in major concert halls and at international festivals such as the Salzburg Festival. In 1994, he won first prize at the International Franz Liszt Competition in Weimar, and in this concert he will also play excerpts from the composer's "Harmonies poétiques et religieuses," such as the serenely meditative "Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude" and the heroic "Funérailles." In this piano extra, Sigfridsson shares the stage with Vincent Heeren, born in Herne in 2009, who was accepted into his piano class as a junior student at the age of nine. With gripping virtuosity, the provocative images of Nikolaus Lenau's Faust poem are translated into music in "Mephisto Waltz No. 1." The concert opens with "Le tombeau de Couperin," a suite in the spirit of classical French music—and a tribute by Ravel to his friends who died in the war.

Henri Sigfridsson & Vincent Heeren

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

Full focus on the music: Every year, several members of the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra travel to Italy, more precisely to the picturesque little town of Montepulciano, not far from Siena. There, surrounded by the sun-drenched Tuscan landscape, is the Academy of Music and Performing Arts, where the musicians can intensively hone selected works that they will present to the Duisburg audience upon their return from the south. Fittingly, this time's program includes Brahms's cheerful String Quintet No. 2, which he composed during his summer vacation in Bad Ischl. This will be accompanied by Mendelssohn Bartholdy's String Quintet No. 1, composed in the spring of 1826, when he was 17 years old.

Montepulciano

Theater Duisburg

"The Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra shines with Mozart," wrote the WAZ newspaper after a "gripping evening of music" in which the Chinese-born New Zealander Tianyi Lu conducted his Requiem. And the young conductor also brought Mozart with her on her return to the orchestra's podium: this time the last of Mozart's five violin concertos. The Salzburg prodigy was not only one of the most gifted composers in music history, but also an outstanding pianist – and violinist. It's no wonder, then, that he put so much effort into the works for "his" instruments. With the Fifth Violin Concerto, he has created a particularly beautiful contribution: the melodies simply flow, the orchestral part is exceedingly rich, and the solo part is highly demanding.

Pioneer among classics

When Akiko Suwanai won the renowned Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1990, she was just 18 years old. It was also the start of an international career, during which the Japanese violinist has been a guest in Duisburg several times. Now she is returning with an exciting program, together with the Argentinian José Gallardo, who is one of the most sought-after chamber music pianists and is making his debut in Duisburg with this concert. The duo evening begins with Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 6, the dramatic style of which was the composer's immediate reaction to his increasing deafness. Erich Wolfgang Korngold's suite "Much Ado About Nothing", which is based on his symphonic incidental music for Shakespeare's play of the same name, then tells of the changing feelings of a young woman in love, while the chromatically sharpened "Four Pieces" by Anton Webern explore dynamic extremes between barely audible tones and blatant fortissimo outbursts. The final work is Schumann’s Opus 121, a work that its creator explicitly described as a “great” sonata – which refers both to its dimensions and to the demands placed on virtuoso playing.


Akiko Suwanai & Jose Gallardo

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