Name: Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir, Soprano
Start: 2026-01-22T19:30:00
Location: Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Kunal Lahiry

Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir

Elbphilharmonie

Some photos on Giorgi Gigashvili's Instagram profile suggest he's more likely to be in a Berlin techno club than on a classical concert stage. For the Georgian pianist, born in 2000, these worlds aren't so contradictory after all – he's playing sonatas by Scarlatti one moment, singing and accompanying folk songs from his homeland the next, and experimenting with electronic music shortly after. And with success: Prizes at prestigious piano competitions, a place among Georgia's Forbes magazine's most influential "30 under 30," and a nomination as a "Rising Star" by the European Concert Hall Organization all mark his young career.

Giorgi Gigashvili, Klavier

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

A dubious meeting of heroes: The notorious womanizer Don Juan and the tragicomic Don Quixote would have little in common if Richard Strauss hadn't so brilliantly captured their fates in music. The Vienna Philharmonic will juxtapose the two symphonic poems in their ProArte program, bringing to life the stories of the literary-confused knight with his aide Sancho Panza and the momentous love affairs of the other Don. At the helm will be Daniel Harding, arguably one of the most interesting conductors of our time: after a meteoric start to his career, he put his baton aside for a while to pursue his second passion, flying as a pilot for Air France. Now, fortunately for audiences, he regularly conducts the finest orchestras again. Perhaps he'll even fly to the performance himself? Who knows.

Vienna Philharmonic / Daniel Hardin

The cimbalom is a true chameleon: Like only the piano, the Hungarian dulcimer feels at home in all genres and styles. And so does Áron Horváth, who, as the European Concert Hall Organization's "Rising Star," tours the continent's major concert halls. With his World Music Quartet, the young cimbalom virtuoso will explore jazz and folk music from Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria at the Elbphilharmonie.

Áron Horváth, Cimbalom

Golda Schultz has no time for fading heroines: "I like female roles that are complex, funny, and interesting, and that don't die. That's why I love Mozart," the South African explains in an interview. Her ability to sing Mozart wonderfully is demonstrated, among other things, by her 2024 album, which bears the beautiful title "Mozart, You Drive Me Crazy!" Here, the heroines from Mozart's operas "Don Giovanni," "Le nozze di Figaro," and "Così fan tutte" speak: strong and complex, tragic and comic—deeply human. With her warm, glowing soprano voice, Golda Schultz breathes enchanting life into all these women in the concert—a highlight of the Great Voices season.

Golda Schultz / Chamber Academy Potsdam

For the first time, Iceland, with the Harpa in Reykjavik, is participating in the European Concert Hall Organization's annual "Rising Stars" program, which sends young artists on tour through the continent's major concert halls. And with Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir, a singer from the Nordic island nation was directly nominated. She loves the poetic, mystical traditions of her country and is currently performing brilliantly not only on the major opera stages in Basel and Berlin, but also realizing unusual projects as a photographer and video artist.

Álfheiður Erla Guðmundsdóttir, Soprano

NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Alisa Weilerstein / Alan Gilbert

Deep gorges, large rock pyramids in intense colors, vast forests and a breathtakingly wide starry sky: In his sound-painting work »Des canyons aux étoiles« (»From the Canyons to the Stars«), Olivier Messiaen invites you on a journey through the impressive national parks of the US state of Utah, which he once visited himself.

Klangforum Wien / Ingo Metzmacher

When three teenagers formed a piano trio in 2013, they were still students and performed under the name "Trio Chagall." More than ten years later, the three friends from Turin have become a professional trio, playing with Italian passion and now appearing as "rising stars" in Europe's prestigious concert halls. As their career progressed, a new name was needed: Inspired by Michelangelo, they called themselves "Trio Concept," with the vision of carving out the beauty of a work like a sculpture from a block of marble.

Trio Concept

In the Audience Orchestra, dedicated amateurs rehearse with great enthusiasm and at a very high artistic level under conductor Michael Petermann, the director of the Hamburger Konservatorium. Each year the orchestra gives two performances in the Grand Hall and further concerts in Hamburg districts, in which they play the pieces they’ve been practicing so intensively.

Elbphilharmonie Audience Orchestra

Two days before the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism, the Kammermusikfreunde invite you to an extraordinary concert evening dedicated to ostracised music. The first part of the concert will focus on works by Polish-Jewish composers whose work was persecuted under the Nazi regime and suppressed from musical life for a long time. The second part of the evening opens up new perspectives: Three German-Jewish cantors and a shofar (reverberating trombone) player present Jewish liturgical music - from traditional chants from Eastern Europe to compositions from the German and American liberal synagogue. The shofar, one of the oldest surviving instruments in the Bible and still an integral part of Jewish services today, lends the concert a special spiritual depth.

Bar Zemach / Linus Roth / Jascha Nemtsov

When mandolin and bağlama meet, a dialogue is created between two cultures that have more in common than it seems at first glance. Derya Yıldırım and Avi Avital explore the connection between baroque, folklore and contemporary chamber music with the sonically experimental Ensemble Resonanz. Together they create an evening that rethinks traditions, tells stories and builds musical bridges – from Anatolia to Europe, between past and present.

Ensemble Resonanz / Derya Yildirim / Avi Avital

Anyone who wins the junior section of the legendary International Tchaikovsky Competition at the age of 13 is under special scrutiny. Even ten years later, Alexander Malofeev continues to fulfill the associated expectations with flying colors. Since then, the Russian, dubbed a "world revolution on the piano" by the Wiener Standard, has collected numerous other prizes and performed with the world's greatest orchestras. In 2022, he stood in for Yevgeny Kissin with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. "The audience went wild with enthusiasm," wrote the Frankfurter Rundschau. At the Elbphilharmonie, the still only 23-year-old now devotes himself to both the grand masters of Russian piano music and darkly shimmering works from Northern Europe.