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

In a musical rally in the countryside, the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra, together with the Nature Workshop – Association for Environmental Education, invites all curious environmental detectives to take a closer look at the surroundings of the Six Lakes Plateau in Duisburg-Wedau. On their exploratory journey through the forest, all participants will combine the themes of music and nature in an exciting and creative way.

Owl and woodpecker in the forest concert

Duisburg-Wedau station

The origins of Odissi, the characteristic dance form of the eastern Indian state of Odisha, date back more than 2,000 years. With its graceful poses and narrative gestures, it is considered one of the eight classical dance styles of the Indian subcontinent. Bijayini Satpathy brings Odissi to Duisburg. Once a leading member of the legendary Nrityagram Dance Ensemble and former artist in residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she will open the "Music of Now – Eigenzeit" festival with an evening of her own choreography: a celebration of India's great poetic literature, a dance and musical exploration of the work of four poets from the 8th to 19th centuries. The middle section of the program will also feature this year's festival curator, Kamalini Mukherji, performing songs by Rabindranath Tagore. This unique performance interweaves powerful themes: the divine, half-male, half-female duality of Ardhanarishvara; the choice of the familiar over the powerful; the rediscovery of inner strength and beauty by a conflicted warrior princess; and the poignant episode of Sita's abduction from the epic Ramayana.

Kalapa

Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord

He is one of the world's most famous composers and has written global hits such as the "Ode to Joy," "Für Elise," and the "Symphony of Destiny." It's hard to imagine how Ludwig van Beethoven was able to compose such wonderful music despite his deafness. And it's no wonder he was often in a bad mood and often called a stubborn person. He heard the tones and melodies in his head: the rustling of the forest, the chirping of birds, the sparkling piano sound, the thunderous pounding of "destiny." In "Masterpieces," the Duisburg Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sebastian Ludwig, presents excerpts from Beethoven's most famous classics. Kai Bettermann tells his story and asks himself who the "immortal beloved" was and why he wanted to make all people brothers and sisters with his music.

Masterpieces

Theater Duisburg

The tabla is one of the traditional percussion instruments of Indian music. Few master it as virtuosically as superstar Bickram Ghosh – who is considered one of his home country's leading musicians not only as a percussionist, but also as a film composer and world musician. This all-round ability connects him with Kala Ramnath, who fell in love with the Indian violin as a child. Today, the internationally acclaimed musician is at home not only in Indian and European classical music, but also in jazz and other musical genres, such as flamenco. After Bickram Ghosh's opening solo performance with tabla and body percussion, Kala Ramnath joins the group for the second half of the concert. The performance concludes with a tribute to sitar and world music legend Ravi Shankar, arguably the most famous Indian musician of recent decades – and a close musical partner of Bickram Ghosh. He can be heard alongside Shankar on the Grammy-winning album “Full Circle: Carnegie Hall 2000,” released in 2002, among others.

One Beat, One World

CityPalais

As curator of the Eigenzeit Festival 2026, singer Kamalini Mukherji invites Duisburg audiences to experience the musical culture of her Indian homeland in as many different facets as possible. A leading exponent of this musical genre known as Rabindra Sangeet, she will present the chants of Indian Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) at her festival performance: a lyrical-musical Gesamtkunstwerk that Kamalini Mukherji cultivates in the spirit of the performance tradition and, inspired by her own literary and musical ideas, develops in a contemporary way. In Duisburg, she will be joined by prominent guests Bickram Ghosh, one of the greatest masters of Indian tabla, who has received numerous Grammy awards and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, India's highest honor for the performing arts, and the celebrated violinist Kala Ramnath, who will enrich the Rabindra Sangeet evening with the melodic and gentle tones of the classical Indian violin. For the first time, the three of them will share the same stage. All arrangements from this diverse selection of Tagore's songs are by the performing artists. Exciting musical discoveries are guaranteed.

Tagore Song Night

There are seasons all over the world, but depending on where we are, they look – or sound – different. Around 300 years ago, Antonio Vivaldi set spring, summer, autumn, and winter to music in a "European" way in his concert cycle "The Four Seasons." Kala Ramnath, in turn, explores the seasons of her home country India (divided into six periods) in her composition "Indian Seasons," arranged by the accomplished composer and sitar player Indro Roy-Chowdhury. Following the opening concert – together with the celebrated percussionist Bickram Ghosh – the master of the Indian violin will then contrast her musical impressions of the cycle of the seasons with Vivaldi's famous concertos. Both works will enter into a global, not merely meteorological, dialogue – at the height of the Duisburg spring – which is thematically complemented by Kala Ramnath's new work "Panchabhoota – The Voice of Nature." In five movements, the composer deals with the classical Indian pentad of the primal elements ether (Akash), air (Vayu), fire (Agni), water (Āpas) and earth (Prithvi).

East-Western Seasons

Steinhof Duisburg

This festival evening at the Church of Our Lady also offers an opportunity to experience a significant Indian musical tradition at its highest artistic level. With her penetrating voice, agile body, and dreadlocks passionately swirling through the air, Parvathy Baul has inspired audiences in over 40 countries over the past decades with the music of the Baul movement: a wandering group of musicians who have been at home in the rural culture of Bengal for centuries and who, in their art of combining song and dance, bring together influences from Hinduism and Muslim-Sufi tradition. During her Eigenzeit performance in Duisburg, Parvathy Baul – honored in 2019 by the Indian government with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the country's highest honor for performing artists – will engage in a transcultural musical exchange with musicians from the Duisburg Philharmonic, among others, as part of a solo recital. Beforehand, she will give an introduction to the fascinating subject of Baul philosophy and its deeply spiritual practice.

The Spiritual Experience of Baul

Kulturkirche Liebfrauen Duisburg

Having already conducted two hugely popular works from the symphonic canon this season – Beethoven's 9th Symphony and Bruckner's 7th Symphony – Stefan Blunier 's third guest appearance presents compositions we don't often encounter in concert. Dmitri Shostakovich may be one of the 20th century's most important composers, but with "Two Pieces by Domenico Scarlatti for Wind Orchestra" we experience him at the very beginning of his career, before he was banned by the Soviet cultural watchdogs. The program then features Paul Hindemith, ostracized by the Nazis, one of Duisburg-born Frank Peter Zimmermann 's favorite composers . His recording of Hindemith's Violin Concerto has even been praised in the music press as a new benchmark recording: a work that shows the composer less as a feared "public enemy," but rather exposes his accessible, lyrical side. The final movement of Carl Nielsen's Symphony No. 4 offers a spectacular "duel" between two timpani. Here, the horrors of the First World War resonate, to which the composer counters the "inextinguishable" in the hymn-like chorale at the end: the elemental will to live, as Nilsen himself interpreted the title.

The Indelible

Diana Tishchenko began playing the violin at the age of six and, barely of age, became the youngest concertmaster in the history of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. But what are the duties of a concertmaster, what is her favorite music, and how does it feel to travel the world playing an almost 300-year-old violin? What the human voice can do, the clarinet can do even more. David Orlowsky discovered this when he first picked up the clarinet. "I try to use the clarinet like my voice." He founded his own trio at the age of 16. He has since won many awards and traveled the globe, exploring the boundaries between musical genres - whether classical, klezmer, or his own compositions. The Indian singer Kamalini Mukherji , who lives in New York , has been a guest in Duisburg many times. She always sees her music as a call to fight for women's rights in India and for human rights around the world. After the exclusive mini-concert in the schools, the students can talk to the three exceptional musicians and learn more about the exciting and diverse life of a musician.

solo4teens

Stadt Duisburg

The Artist in Residence for the 2025/2026 season will meet the curator of the Eigenzeit Festival: In a unique artistic encounter between human voice and mandolin, Avi Avital and Kamalini Mukherji will concluding the "Music of Now – Eigenzeit" festival with a joint program that juxtaposes the classical music of the West with that of the Indian subcontinent in a fluid exchange. The evening's artists will perform music by contemporary British composer David Bruce, who explores the hours of the day and their particular moods in his new work for voice, mandolin, sarod – an Indian long-necked lute – and string quartet. The changing times of day – morning, evening, and night – occupy a special place in the raga system of classical Indian music and thus also have a profound influence on the raga-based songs of Rabindranath Tagore. This inspired Kamalini Mukherji to create a program and album with a similar theme several years ago. In any case, the Duisburg audience can expect a sensual and poetic concert experience in which different musical worlds flow into one another.

Day and Night

In 2026, the Duisburg Music and Art School will present the annual Choir Academy project "DU sing(s)t!" in cooperation with Duisburg elementary and special needs schools and the JeKits project with a focus on "Singing." This year, around 300 students and their teachers, as well as JeKits teachers from the Duisburg Music and Art School, will be on board. Under the direction of Mirko van Stiphaut, a teen band from the Music and Art School will provide the appropriate musical accompaniment. "Hey, let's sing" is the name of this year's colorful program of traditional children's songs and well-known pop songs, with which the Duisburg kids will take to the big stage under the overall direction of Anne-Sarah Gibson.

YOU sing!

Ever since her sensational concert with the Berlin Philharmonic and its former chief conductor Claudio Abbado in 2007, Iveta Apkalna has performed on almost every major stage in the world and on the most magnificent concert organs around the globe. Her home, however, is in Hamburg, as titular organist of the Klais organ in the Great Hall of the Elbphilharmonie, which she ceremoniously inaugurated in 2017 with the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra and Kent Nagano himself. The Latvian organist's concert in Duisburg will focus on her compatriot Pēteris Vasks, who celebrates his 80th birthday on April 16, 2026, and is considered one of the greatest names among contemporary composers. His work is closely connected to his Latvian homeland: to its traditional folklore as well as the painful history of his people. Also from the Baltics is the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, who, like his colleague, is a celebrity among living composers: In September 2025, he will turn a proud 90. Joining these two contemporaries is the Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the greatest composers of all time. He not only composed, but was also one of the best organists of his era.

Baltic triumvirate

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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