Name: Akiko Suwanai & Jose Gallardo
Start: 2025-04-13T19:00:00
Location: Philharmonie Mercatorhalle

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

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

Around 250 years separate the Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach from the Hungarian composer György Ligeti, one of the most distinguished representatives of New Music in the 20th century. Yet they have something in common: the radical concentration of compositional means with which they advanced into new realms of expression. It is therefore a fascinating dialogue when Bach's famous "Goldberg Variations," a crown jewel of keyboard literature to this day, encounters György Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1. While Bach uses a simply enchanting melody, which he develops into 30 variations, Ligeti takes a short four-note motif, which he then allows to undergo a series of metamorphoses.

Radical worlds of expression

Theater Duisburg

The large, old trees in the forest hide a fascinating secret. Musical instruments are built from the trunks and branches of maple, spruce, and pine—as well as from the wood of trees from distant lands. An entire musical forest will be heard during the concert. The Duisburg Philharmonic will talk about their instrument trees and discuss the importance of protecting them so that the forest can be preserved as a habitat for animals and plants. After the concert, an instrument maker will present her work, and guests of all ages will have the opportunity to try out the instruments for themselves.

Astrein – Instruments and their trees

Lehmbruck Museum

As a Community Music Artist with the Duisburg Philharmonic, Koray Berat Sari brings together the musical traditions of various cultures in specially developed concert formats. This is also the case in his new project "Newroz and the Cultures of the World": Spring ignites a vibrant fire of hope and new beginnings - a fire that burns across continents in the most diverse traditions. While many cultures celebrate the awakening of nature and resurrection as symbols of renewal, the Indo-Iranian New Year festival Newroz (Persian: نوروز ) marks a special high point in the spring calendar. These holidays are more than just occasions to celebrate: they bring together people and rituals from all over the world in a unique celebration of the joy of life. This global diversity of spring traditions is the focus of the concert. To this end, Koray Berat Sari has compiled a program that combines traditional instruments such as the Anatolian bağlama, the Caucasian duduk, and Iranian drums with the sounds of classical orchestral instruments, in which music transcends boundaries and connects cultures. The collaboration of professional musicians and a selection of participants in the "Marxloh Music Project" creates musical bridges between Easter, Newroz, and other spring festivals, bringing the magic of new beginnings to life.

Spring fire

CityPalais

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

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

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

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

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

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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