Name: Kaleidoscope
Start: 2026-01-18T11:00:00
Location: Wallraf-Richartz Museum

Daniel Raabe

Valentin Ungureanu

Vincent Royer

Dylan Naylor

Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne

As different as we humans are – in one respect we are all the same, without exception: We must die; all life on earth ends. When, where and how – that is the great question that has preoccupied us as long as we can think and feel. What is death like? As the 34-year-old Richard Strauss imagined it: a look back, sublime, solemn, a tremendous crescendo towards a shining horizon? Or is the same composer closer to an inscrutable truth when, in 1948, a year before his own death, he lets the soul soar in free flight in the Four Last Songs and presents us earthlings with one of the most moving works of classical music? The Finnish soprano Anu Komsi and Sakari Oramo on the podium delve into this overwhelming realm between melancholy, peace, farewell and the premonition of death. But dying can also have quite different sides… the British composer George Benjamin sings a song about it.

Swan song

Cologne Philharmonie

What music should definitely be taken to the famous desert island? Twelve pieces, let's be generous. Eleven, you'd have to weigh things up and consider them a bit, as the selection isn't exactly small. But the twelfth is a given, without a doubt: Johann Sebastian Bach's Christmas Oratorio is music with an eternal quality – and, if you don't take the content too seriously, it's definitely suitable for year-round listening. This work is almost 300 years old, and yet it sounds as if Bach's ink had just dried: fresh, festive, thrillingly spirited, and deeply heartfelt.

Shout for joy, be glad!

How do you celebrate New Year's Eve? Raclette, champagne, and fireworks? Looking back and looking ahead? Perhaps good conversations, with or without a party? For us, New Year's Eve is, above all, music, with which we bid farewell to the old year and toast the new one with you. We're already looking forward to seeing you again on New Year's Eve: The wonderful conductor Elim Chan has already fascinated and enchanted us in four concert programs.

New Year's Eve

A good cliffhanger is the most important thing: Only those who are almost bursting with suspense at the end of a story stay hooked and want to know what happens next as quickly as possible. Directors of soaps and series use this trick, which they may have copied from Scheherazade: A Persian king has married her for one day and one night, after which she is to die. With imagination and cleverly placed cliffhangers, Scheherazade tells the king 1001 Nights of sailors, princesses, murders, miracles and, of course, true love.

1001 Nights

Kaleidoscope

Wallraf-Richartz Museum

At the beginning of one of the most famous sunrises in music history: radiant and majestic, maximum light intensity from zero to one hundred within seconds. Richard Strauss's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a magnificent masterpiece whose splendor no one can escape.

Life puzzles

Louis & Louise

There's someone standing on the edge of the abyss, seeing catastrophe approaching: a composer who works with his ears for his ears knows he's going deaf. And he's already in his early 30s. "I want to seize fate by the jaws, it certainly shall not bend me down completely." So said Ludwig van Beethoven in 1801.

On the pulse

" My Father Explains Our Night Sky to Me Every Saturday " ... how poor the world would be without mnemonics ! This one , about the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus , and Neptune, also belongs in our educational luggage. The celestial body Pluto is no longer on our mnemonic list; a few years ago it was deemed too small and therefore rigorously banished from the planetary sky.

Galactic

To put it bluntly, one could rightly describe Johannes Brahms's German Requiem as a misnomer. This work is not a requiem, a Catholic requiem mass in Latin, but one that is entirely devoted to the living. It is not about the deceased themselves, their journey before the throne of God, the horrors of the Last Judgement, or the anxious plea for mercy in the afterlife. Rather, it addresses all those left behind on earth, "those who suffer" and who, in their despair, need consolation.

Confidence

Opening

The tragedy begins with the first note. Above a pounding bass and restlessly driving strings, oboes and flutes spiral upward in painful dissonances. It is music as if a tormented soul were writhing in its agony. When the choir joins in at the climax of this monumental build-up, it sounds like a scream that is both suffering and redemption. Johann Sebastian Bach's St. John Passion: a stroke of genius whose harsh drama still thrills and moves us today.