As the world prepares to embrace a new year, the Göttinger Symphonieorchester orchestrates a vibrant celebration, blending the timeless elegance of classical compositions with contemporary interpretations. Over a series of enthralling events, audiences are invited to explore the rich tapestry of orchestral music, featuring iconic works by Strauss, Schubert, and Brahms, as well as innovative performances by emerging artists like Polina Tarasenko and Sergey Malov. From the elegance of Viennese waltzes to the evocative narratives of modern symphonies, this musical journey promises to captivate and inspire.

A Symphony of Seasons: Göttinger Symphonieorchester Welcomes the New Year

The Göttinger Symphonieorchester offers a captivating lineup of events from January to March 2025, featuring a diverse range of works by composers from various eras and backgrounds. Highlights include Mikhail Nossyrev's survival story, Tchaikovsky's homage to Mozart, and Brahms' final symphonic masterpiece. With performances by renowned conductors and soloists, these events promise rich musical experiences that traverse historical and cultural borders.

A Symphony of Stories: Göttinger Symphonieorchester's Eventful Journey

The Göttinger Symphonieorchester's 2025 season offers a diverse array of musical experiences. From the orchestral power of Verdi, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky in 'Pathétique' to the playful allure of Prokofiev's 'Peter and the Wolf', the season promises to delight audiences of all ages. Innovative performances like 'Cross-border' showcase unique brass compositions, while 'House Music' features a spirited flute solo. Join us on a journey through classical masterpieces and contemporary works as the orchestra performs in Germany and abroad.

A Symphony of Events: Göttinger Symphonieorchester's 2025 Season

The Göttinger Symphonieorchester is set to offer a diverse array of musical experiences this spring. From brass chamber concerts and Rachmaninoff to the art of tango and the evocative sounds of Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, the orchestra promises an eclectic season that spans continents, genres, and eras. With renowned musicians and innovative compositions on the lineup, each event is crafted to resonate with audiences in unique and profound ways.

A Symphony of Diversity: Göttinger Symphonieorchester's Spring Highlights

This spring, the Göttinger Symphonieorchester presents an enthralling lineup of performances that traverse the realms of history, politics, and pure musical genius. From the politically charged premiere of 'Girls und Panzer' to the hypnotic fusion of classical and electronic in 'Pastorale Electro', each event promises to be a unique journey through sound. Join us as we explore the orchestra's diverse offerings, showcasing the works of legendary composers and contemporary maestros alike.

A Symphony of Stories: Göttinger Symphonieorchester's Captivating May and June Performances

Prepare for an unforgettable musical journey as the Göttinger Symphonieorchester embarks on an illustrious concert series throughout Germany in 2025. Featuring the grandeur of the Proms, guest performances in historic venues, and an evening dedicated solely to the genius of Beethoven, this series promises to be a celebration of orchestral mastery. Under the baton of renowned conductors like Nicholas Milton and Risto Joost, the orchestra will enchant audiences in Göttingen, Weilburg, Duderstadt, and more, showcasing classic compositions alongside vibrant renditions of beloved melodies.

A Symphony Journey Across Germany: The Göttinger Symphonieorchester's 2025 Concert Series

The Göttinger Symphonieorchester presents a captivating series of orchestral events that promise to enthrall music enthusiasts. From the nuanced sounds of the violas in 'Bratschissimo 2.0' to the majestic symphonies of Schubert and Dvořák, each concert offers a unique auditory experience. Highlights include a bassoon concerto by Carl Maria von Weber, the enchanting 'Glasslands' by Anna Clyne, and an exploration of water-inspired compositions. Join us as we delve into these musical journeys, celebrating the talents of accomplished performers and the timeless works of renowned composers.

Symphonic Journeys: Göttinger Symphonieorchester's Diverse Orchestral Showcase

The Göttinger Symphonieorchester is set to enchant audiences with a series of diverse orchestral performances from March to April 2026. From the ethereal realms of 'Glasslands' to the dynamic 'Concert for All Senses' and a filmic 'Night at the Oscars', these events promise a profound auditory experience. Highlights include inventive compositions by Anna Clyne, the mesmerizing saxophone of Asya Fateyeva, and the orchestral mastery under conductor Nicholas Milton, ensuring each performance is both a celebration of classical music and an innovative artistic journey.

Exploring the Sonic Journey: Göttinger Symphonieorchester's Diverse Concerts

The members of the Academy of the Göttinger Symphonieorchester regularly perform alongside their mentors, but this concert presents them in an exciting new light, adding a solo and chamber music dimension to their already demanding program. Our young musicians will perform a captivating and diverse program, featuring fascinating combinations and a multitude of instrumental talents that explore a wide repertoire spectrum. Support the mission of our orchestra to nurture and promote the next generation. You will be amazed!

Academy Concert

Reformed Church of Göttingen

This is going to be exciting! In 2021, Anna Clyne created a concerto featuring the saxophone as an unusual solo instrument, transporting us to mythical realms: "'Glasslands' conjures an imaginary world with three realms ruled by the banshee," says Clyne, "a female spirit who, in Irish folklore, announces the death of a family member by howling, shrieking, or wailing, usually in the stillness of the night." The soloist is Asya Fateyeva, a German saxophonist of Ukrainian descent. And Tchaikovsky's Fifth, one of his most popular symphonies, also features predestined events: "Total resignation to fate, or, what amounts to the same thing, to the inscrutable decree of providence," he wrote, referring to the first movement.

Glasslands

Stadthalle Göttingen

Guest performance in Bückeburg

Rathaussaal Bückeburg

Guest performance Holzminden

Stadthalle Holzminden

A cello concerto cloaked in a symphonic cloak: At the very end, after many revisions and shortly before his death, Sergei Prokofiev called his Opus 125 "Symphonic Concerto." Quite appropriate, for it is so versatile, so humorous, and so powerful that it successfully combines the two genres. Alexey Stadler follows in the footsteps of none other than Mstislav Rostropovich, who played the solo part at the premiere in 1952. In the second half of the concert, the Stuttgart conductor Johannes Klumpp interprets a symphony by Antonín Dvořák, not from the new world, but still from the old: The Fifth, already in a style all its own and at least as valuable as its famous younger sister, premiered in Prague in 1879.

In contrast

For centuries, water has been an inexhaustible source of inspiration in music. Numerous composers have cast this ever-changing element into musical forms: from clinking ice, surging waves, and pouring rain to still, deep water and mysterious mist. The Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, together with the Göttingen Youth Symphony Orchestra, embarks on a journey of discovery into the musical world of water. And when the audience takes the plunge and joins in, everything flows.

Everything is flowing

Ballroom “Zum fidelen Anreischken” Duderstadt

Free Waldorf School Göttingen

That's what you call fate: While the bassoon is featured prominently as a soloist in many symphonies and operas, explicit solo concertos for this particularly dark woodwind instrument are rare. Carl Maria von Weber, the composer of the rather dark opera "Der Freischütz," wrote a bassoon concerto in 1811: an ideal playing field for the French bassoonist Marceau Lefèvre. The Italian conductor and pianist Vanessa Benelli Mosell frames Weber's rarely heard gem with timeless works: Wagner's Ringfarbige Musik der Freude über seinen neuen Sohn Siegfried (Ring-colored Music of Joy over His Newborn Son Siegfried), and Schubert's arguably best-known and unfinished symphony, whose two movements are among the finest of the entire 19th century.

Unfinished

Guest performance in Uelzen

Theater an der Ilmenau

What would the orchestral sound be without violas? One only has to experience a Mahler symphony to appreciate the slightly darkened, slightly scratchy sound of this often overlooked string group. In this chamber concert, the viola—as it prefers to be called, more elegantly—can be enjoyed in its purest form and up close. Oksana Labach and Igor Tulchynsky of the viola section of the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra put their instrument in the spotlight, performing works by Carl Stamitz, Max Reger, Jean Sibelius, and Jean-Marie Leclair. And the occasional addition of a violin to the stage provides an opportunity to marvel at the special character of its bigger sister by comparison.

Bratschissimo 2.0

GDA Göttingen

This concert conducted by Leslie Suganandarajah demonstrates that the USA has much to offer despite current turmoil. The Sri Lankan-born conductor has been Music Director of the Salzburg Landestheater since 2019, where he brings together a broad spectrum of American music.
He begins with Anna Clyne, this season's Composer in Focus of the GSO, followed by the even more recent Trumpet Concerto by the already legendary jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, featuring Selina Ott, born in Austria in 1998, as soloist. And after the interval, a rarity: Florence Price, who made a name for herself at the beginning of the 20th century, was one of the first female composers in the USA.

Blues

Who would have thought back then – that this son, born exactly 200 years ago, would one day become a waltz king. One whose works have been among the most performed for what feels like an eternity. One who, in terms of song output, can really only be compared to Michael Jackson or Paul McCartney. Johann Strauss II, the son of his father of the same name, with strong Viennese roots and a heart beating in triple time, created sparkling waltz and polka hits that have stood the test of time and that almost everyone can whistle along to. Not just on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, but then with particular zip. Chief conductor Nicholas Milton lives up to his reputation and peppers the program with little interludes from other composers. Cheers!

Spark fire

PS Speicher

EPSG:4326

Guest performance Amsterdam NL

The Concertgebouw

New Year's Concert – Funkenfeuer

New Year's Eve Concert – Funkenfeuer

Guest performance Bremen

The Bell, Bremen

Ebenezer Scrooge hasst Weihnachten – er gönnt seinem Angestellten Bob Cratchit nicht einmal den Feiertag und weist Bitten um Hilfe kalt zurück. Auch die Einladung seines Neffen schlägt er aus. Erst als ihm der Geist seines verstorbenen Partners Marley erscheint, beginnt ein Umdenken. Drei weitere Geister führen ihm schließlich Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft vor Augen – und Scrooge erkennt, dass er sein Leben ändern muss. Henrik Albrecht hat aus Dickens’ berühmter Erzählung ein packendes Orchesterhörspiel geschaffen. Patrick Rohbeck und das Göttinger Symphonieorchester lassen musikalischen Weihnachtszauber entstehen – mit Hollywoodklängen, warmen Streichern, festlichen Bläsern und vertrauten Liedern in neuem Gewand.

A Christmas Carol

Stadthalle Osterode am Harz

The fact that Pyotr Tchaikovsky himself considered his ballet "Sleeping Beauty" his best – having also composed "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker" – elevates this work to perhaps the finest ballet music of all time. The original title of the fairy tale in Charles Perrault's version, which translates roughly as "The Sleeping Beauty," makes clear what the literary source is about: a 15-year-old girl falls into a sleep that lasts almost a century. Towards the end of his life, Tchaikovsky created a somewhat impressionistic work of dreams, dangers, longings, and passions, which inherently invites one to dance. The ballet school "Art la danse" brings the joy of this to the stage of the Stadthalle.

Sleeping Beauty

Guest performance Groß Schneen

Carl Friedrich Gauss School

If there is one 20th-century composer on whom everyone can agree, then Sergei Rachmaninoff has a great chance. He inspires perhaps more people today than ever before, especially his two middle piano concertos, which are high on classical music streaming lists.
Russian-Armenian pianist Eva Gevorgyan, born in 2004, will breathe new life into the romantic sounds of the second. Chief conductor Nicholas Milton will preface the concert with a contemporary work by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz – and place the symphony by another important Russian composer at the end. With "The Emergence of Personality," the subtitle of his Fifth, Dmitri Shostakovich achieved his temporary rehabilitation under Stalin in the 1930s.

Resistance

Is there more perfectly formed Baroque music than Johann Sebastian Bach's "Goldberg Variations"? Numerous self-respecting pianists have attempted them. Glenn Gould twice. And most recently, Víkingur Ólafsson and Lang Lang, to name just a few. Named after the musician Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, born in Danzig in 1727, the 30 variations on a G major aria theme with a common bass melody are an absolute pinnacle of the art of variation, against which subsequent composers have always measured themselves. 

Goldberg Variations

Beethoven chose E-flat major for his last piano concerto, the heroic key from his Eroica. This weighty classic, played here by the sensationally talented young pianist Justus Friedrich Eichorn from Weimar, who had already caused quite a stir, is correspondingly energetic, brilliant, and virtuosic. And before Hindemith sends his painterly hero from the time of the Peasants' War, who would later become the title character of his famous opera, through a turbulent life, cast in music and sadly too rarely heard, Mozart's Schürzenjäger takes the stage. The overture to "Don Giovanni" is a masterpiece in just a few minutes, a character study of the title character that is among the most artistic in operatic literature.

Heroes

Anyone who doesn't know him absolutely must get to know him now: Emil, the brave detective who, with his new friends, pursues a vicious thief in Berlin. For almost 100 years, Erich Kästner's classic children's book "Emil and the Detectives" has delighted young and old alike, and even today, in Kästner's anniversary year, its fascination continues. At the opening of the family concert series, it can now be experienced in a whole new way: the Göttingen Literature Autumn and the GSO have jointly conceived a musical reading that presents Emil Tischbein, Pony Hütchen, and Gustav with the horn in a completely new light. The Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jason Weaver, will provide the musical accompaniment to the story, and actor Richy Müller will read from the book.

Emil and the Detectives

Stadthalle Northeim

Osterode am Harz town hall

Guest performance Wolfsburg

Scharoun Theater, Wolfsburg

It is probably the country that currently poses the most difficult puzzles for all friends of a united Europe, but at least culturally it is one of the most exciting in the East: Hungary exerted a considerable influence on Central European musical history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet far from the much-performed Brahms dances, the program features three, partly relatively unknown, Hungarian composers, all born around the turn of the century.
Béla Bartók's "Pictures" of his homeland, which the Swiss conductor Simon Gaudenz introduces at the beginning, are still somewhat familiar.

Fire

Guest performance in Marburg

Erwin Piscator House

When the young violinist Anna Im, who won numerous competition prizes in 2024, begins Johannes Brahms' Violin Concerto, a true event is guaranteed. It has long been considered one of the three or four most important pieces of its kind in the entire 19th century, a Romantic bravura piece and a crowd-pleaser. Conductor Antonio Méndez concludes the concert with a work that underscores its radiant character: Robert Schumann once expressed his gratitude for the warm welcome in Düsseldorf with his Third Symphony. And the nickname "Rhenish" is to be taken quite literally here, with strong reference to the "cheerful nature" of the people there.

Rhenish

Chamber music in a small, exquisite format. This season's series opens with two string players: Schubert's Erlkönig-Lied, based on Goethe's nature-magical ballad, is performed here in a version for violin and viola – followed by a piece with a rare instrumentation: the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini once took a Rossini melody for variations, here actually played by the solo double bass. And after the Sarabande by the Norwegian Johan Halvorsen, we arrive at Beethoven, with his early third string trio for violin, viola, and cello. The D major work exudes nothing less than the atmosphere of a pure musical idyll. A salute from the end of the 18th century, a perfect concert finale.

Erlkönig

Family concert King Carrot with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra   conducted by Tim Hüttemeister .

A vegetable patch can be more exciting than you think. Much more exciting, in fact. It's not uncommon for an overzealous cook or a hungry rabbit to show up. And then a carrot acts like it's king: it doesn't care much for reality, lives in its own fantasy world and demands that the other vegetables always dance to its tune. Of course, no one will let that happen, and so there are arguments and even more excitement than usual. What does power do to the carrot? And how does love bond? Composer Andreas N. Tarkmann used Jacques Offenbach's operetta "Le Roi Carotte" as the basis for creating a clever work for chamber orchestra based on Jörg Schade 's story that is sure to whet the appetite of all children.

King Carrot

German Theatre, Göttingen

Guest performance in Hamelin

Theater Hameln

Guest performance Northeim

Dance! It's starting again! To kick off the season, Chief Conductor Nicholas Milton presents a refreshing, dance-based program. First – how fitting – childhood memories: Zoltán Kodály spent his early years in Galánta and later incorporated melodies from there into his dances named after the Hungarian town. Then the curtain rises for Anna Clyne , the GSO's new "Composer in Focus," born in England and living in the USA! In her wonderfully elegiac piece "Dance," composed a few years ago, the Belgian Deutsche Grammophon cellist Camille Thomas plays the solo part. Even Johannes Brahms's First Symphony, after much hesitation, was a beginning – and moved Clara Schumann to exclaim, "wonderfully magnificent, quite overwhelming."

Dance!

Guest performance Rinteln

St. Nicholas, Rinteln

On Saturday, September 20th, it's that time again...
The Göttingen Symphony Orchestra opens its doors and invites you to its "Open Day." The Godehardstraße Cultural Center will feature many exciting activities and a varied program for young and old.

In addition to crafts and instrument presentations, there will be an exciting look behind the scenes of our orchestra and direct contact with our musicians and Nicholas Milton . Small chamber music ensembles round out the program.

Open House

Cultural Center, Göttingen

guest performance Weilburg IV

Renaissancehof Weilburg

guest performance Weilburg III

guest performance Hildesheim

Marienrode Priory

Konzert St. Jacobi II

Evangelical Lutheran Church of St Jacob

It makes sense, if not from time to time absolutely necessary, to fill a concert evening exclusively with music by Ludwig van Beethoven. It begins with his first overture, followed by his Rondo for piano and orchestra, which was written even earlier. The already mature composer wrote his Choral Fantasy as a kind of "little ninth symphony" in which he experimented with the combination of choir and orchestra - if you like, look for the melody parallels to the great work that has been peacemaking for two centuries during the performance of the Göttingen City Choir... The concert, conducted by the Estonian conductor Risto Joost, ends with one of Beethoven's best-known works, the rather beautiful and natural "Pastoral" symphony.

Beethoven pur

guest performance Weilburg II

guest performance Weilburg

guest performance Duderstadt

Ballhaus „Zum fidelen Anreischken“ Duderstadt

"Brilliant! Excellent!", Londoners would say. "A real promenade concert!" Because this will sound familiar to them from the Royal Albert Hall: marches and other hits by their national saints Elgar and Vaughan Williams, along with some phenomenal classical melodies such as Rossini's Tell Overture, Grieg's Bergkönig Hall and Offenbach's Hoffmann Barcarole. For film fans, Hollywood legend John Williams is on board the excursion steamer for sophisticated entertainment music. And chief conductor Nicholas Milton brings the great fun for the ears to a fitting finale with Elgar's first Pomp and Circumstance March - whose "Land of Hope and Glory" is loved almost more by Londoners than the actual British national anthem...

Proms

guest performance in Salzgitter

Gymnasium Salzgitter-Bad

We listen, dance and let ourselves drift when musicians from the GSO meet DJ, composer and producer Leon Weber. In the intoxication of sounds, classical and club music, chamber music and electronics mix. With his unusual club sound, the Munich-based multi-instrumentalist has built up a global fan base under the pseudonym LCAW, toured all over the world and generated over 150 million streams to date. In addition to his DJ career, he also repeatedly draws on his musical roots as a classically trained cellist and pianist for special projects: He fuses classical compositions with his own sound world, takes on scores by Beethoven, Ravel or Reich, deconstructs them and builds bridges between classical works and experimental electronic music.

Pastorale Electro

musa e.V.

From Beethoven to Debussy. From trio to quartet. From the end of the 18th to the end of the 19th century. Ludwig van Beethoven was still a young man in his mid-twenties when he wrote three string trios with the opus number 9. And he was expressly convinced of the quality of his work. The third example of this collection is indeed absolutely captivating, dark and full of passion. What it does to the sound when a second violin is added to the violin can be wonderfully studied in Claude Debussy's only string quartet, which was written 100 years later. But one thing remains astonishing: that the impressionist tone painter managed to remain true to his style with just four instruments, even in this small, intimate form.

Zauberhaft

Altes Rathaus Göttingen

After Robert Schumann's Manfred Overture, which has already established itself as an independent orchestral work to such an extent that its literary basis (Lord Byron) has almost been forgotten, we hear a very current premiere. The young German composer Clemens K. Thomas says of his work: "'Girls und Panzer' is not a piece about war, but about its consumability in Central Europe." It is about "politics as a balancing act full of compromises and contradictions." This is followed by Composer in Focus Matthew Hindson with "Maralinga", which also has political references: that was the name of a British nuclear test site in Australia in the 1950s. And finally, Arthur Honegger provides a conciliatory conclusion with his fourth symphony "Basler Freuden", which was written shortly after the end of the Second World War.

Girls und Panzer

If you go on holiday, think about what it was like 200 years ago. Horse-drawn carriage instead of car, I-see-something-you-don't-see instead of tablet. Felix and Fanny, the two extremely musical siblings who lived back then, go on a journey in this concert. From Leipzig they come to Switzerland and Italy, but they want to go further, to an island: to England and Scotland. And because they have both already thought up a lot of music, the notes come to them at each new stop. Of course you will get to know Mendelssohn hits like the Scottish Symphony and "A Midsummer Night's Dream", but also small details like one of the songs without words, which sounds so wonderful like a rattling carriage, or the Swiss song from the eleventh string symphony.

Felix and Fanny on the road

Deutsches Theater Göttingen

Die auf zahllosen großen Bühnen auftretende Sopranistin Annette Dasch mit Liedern von Richard Strauss – was für eine vielversprechende Kombination! Dreimal Hesse und einmal Eichendorff wählte der Bayer als Grundlage für sein letztes großes Werk; eher behutsam, aber tief bewegend besingen diese „Vier letzten Lieder“ den Kreislauf des Lebens. Zuvor begibt sich Andreas Schüller, Generalmusikdirektor des Stadttheaters Gießen, in märchenhafte Zauber- und Geisteswelten. Jean Sibelius schrieb zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts die bildhafte Musik zum symbolistischen Strindberg-Stück „Svanevit“ (Schwanenweiß); Richard Wagner ließ in seinem letzten Musikdrama das Orchester ein wahres Bühnenweihfestspiel erzaubern; und Arvo Pärts erst zehn Jahre alter, schwebend-choralartiger „Swansong“ nimmt Bezug auf den Theologen John Henry Newman.

Swan Song

Tango is like waltz: popular dance rhythms were transformed into works of art for concert stages with the help of brilliant composers. And what Johann Strauss achieved on the one hand can undoubtedly be said for Astor Piazzolla on the other: he helped tango - which also exists in the triple-time version known as "Vals" - to gain worldwide recognition. But even though milongas are now taking place everywhere, Argentina is and remains the heart of this style of music. This is also shown by the other composers represented in this concert, whose works were compiled by the Buenos Aires-born Italian conductor Pablo Boggiano - who is known to be an expert in these sounds. Pasión, passion: if it was ever to be found in music, then it is in tango...

Libertango

Sheddachhalle Göttingen

Sergei Rachmaninoff's first piano concerto, which is often and somewhat unfairly overshadowed by the popular numbers two and three, is a magical work by the pianist and composer who is not even 20 years old. Fresh, energetic, romantic - and the revision almost three decades later provided the heavenly finishing touches. The Viennese conductor Katharina Müllner, who will begin her tenure as conductor at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in the 2024/25 season, is creating a program around this concert full of Italian dance fire (Rossini), Russian-Asian landscape painting including a desert caravan (Borodin) and Czech national pride: Dvořák's "My Home" is a theater overture that is not heard all that often, but is very finely crafted and simply fun.

Steppenskizze

Who doesn't love this soft, sometimes radiant, sometimes dull, murmuring sound of the brass instruments? But you don't have to go to a church or to Wagner's "Parsifal" to enjoy it - neither of which would be a bad choice, of course. In this chamber concert, it can be experienced almost directly and without distracting ornamentation. Trumpet, horn, trombone. These are all the ingredients for a brass concert that promises to be a delight for the ears thanks to proven musicians and numerous exciting, rarely heard composers. Just one example: the piece "Crossing Barriers" by the French composer Jeff Scott, which actually overcomes obstacles by turning to the African circle dance near the equator.

Cross-border

guest performance Uelzen

Wenn sich zu Beginn von Bedřich Smetanas „Die Moldau“ die beiden Quellen des Flusses zusammenfinden und zum golden schimmernden Hauptthema hinleiten, meinen wir uns im Herz der tschechischen Musik zu befinden. So sehr sind diese Wellenklänge ins kollektive Ohrgedächtnis eingeflossen. Und in der heiter-beschwingten, mitunter gar walzertanzenden Achten, die noch vor seiner USA-Zeit entstand und also aus der „alten“ Welt stammt, eroberte sich auch Antonín Dvořák, der Landsmann Smetanas, zahlreiche Freiheiten von der europäischen Tradition. Im Zentrum des Konzerts steht eine Hausmusik von Matthew Hindson, unserem Composer in Focus, die gar nicht besonders bürgerlich, sondern ziemlich peppig daherkommt. Die junge Flötistin Meret Louisa Vogel übernimmt darin den virtuosen Solopart.

House Music

guest performance in Fürth

Stadttheater Fürth

guest performance Amsterdam NL

Schicksal, versöhnende letzte Worte und viel Pathos: Wenn das keine Hits sind! Giuseppe Verdis „Die Macht des Schicksals“ zählt seit jeher zum Opern-Repertoirekern und die Ouvertüre dazu zum Konzertklassiker. Johannes Brahms schrieb mit seinem letzten Orchesterwerk, dem Doppelkonzert, eine – tatsächlich so klingende – Versöhnung für seinen Jugendfreund Joseph Joachim. Violine und Violoncello, deren Verbindung der Komponist als „Riesengeige“ bezeichnete, spielen die Shootingstar-Geschwister Charlotte und Friedrich Thiele, Jahrgänge 2000 und 1996. Und auch Tschaikowskys vielleicht bekannteste Symphonie, die Sechste, war 1893 ein Schlussstrich, das letzte und so überwältigende Orchesterwerk des Russen. Die Leitung dieser Hits hat selbstverständlich Chefdirigent Nicholas Milton.

Pathétique

Concert St. Jacobi

Evangelical Lutheran Church of St Jacob.

Peter, a clever boy, lives near a dark forest with his grandfather. Inside the forest lives a wolf, one of the evil kind. The wolf has his eyes set on the other animals, who happen to be Peter's friends. But Peter is truly a clever boy: he sets a clever trap for the wolf. With the musical fairy tale "Peter and the Wolf," Sergei Prokofiev composed a programmatic piece in 1936 that aimed to introduce children to the world of classical music. How well he succeeded is best judged by the adults among us who still remember the characteristic motifs of the oboe and flute from their music lessons. The outcome of the story can be anticipated: The main character, Peter, is represented by cheerful and adventurous violins.

Peter and the Wolf

guest performance

guest performance Bückeburg

Johannes Brahms schrieb seine Vierte in den Sommermonaten der Jahre 1884 und 1885 und sprach doch von einer „traurigen Symphonie, die nicht nach dem hiesigen Klima schmecke“ – ein Eindruck, den wohl mancher Hörer teilt, wir befinden uns eben im verschatteten Spätwerk. Und dennoch gilt diese letzte seiner Symphonien vielen als seine gewichtigste. Nicholas Milton lässt dazu passend Franz Schuberts melancholisch bis kräftige „Zauberharfe“ aus der Rosamunde-Musik erklingen und lädt in der Konzertmitte das Gauss-Quartett Göttingen ein, „The Rave and the Nighingale“ unseres Composers in Focus Matthew Hindson zu spielen, ein Stück, mit dem der australische Komponist darüber nachdenkt, welche Art Musik Schubert wohl geschrieben hätte, wenn er 200 Jahre später geboren worden wäre.

Rave and the Nightingale

Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart have more in common than their biographies suggest at first glance. The melancholy Russian of the 19th century saw the easy-going Austrian of the 18th century as his most important role model, indeed as the most important musician of all time - and wrote some works in his style. For example, the fourth suite, which is based on several short compositions by Mozart. Sergey Malov, the Russian conductor and soloist of this support association concert, has a very rarely heard special feature in his repertoire alongside other Mozart and Tchaikovsky works: Curtain up for the extra-soft sounding violoncello da spalla, which is played on the shoulder - with a strap around the neck!

Mozartian

Aula am Wilhelmsplatz

Ten years in a penal camp north of the Arctic Circle. It's a miracle that the Russian composer Mikhail Nossyrev survived that and continued to work as a conductor from 1953 to 1981. "A Fairy Tale" was written while in captivity, and his impressive piano concerto, played here by Alexander Krichel, is one of his works that is better known outside of Russia. Then Christoph-Mathias Mueller, who is returning as a guest for the first time after his time as GSO chief conductor, crosses a national border that will hopefully remain uncontested for a long time to come: the Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja created his late-romantic second symphony during the First World War (and the Finnish Civil War). The role models Sibelius and Strauss are audible, but the work is an unmistakable sign that Madetoja found his own, convincing tone.

reunion

What actually happened to the girl? In the second movement of this late string quartet we hear Franz Schubert's own song "Death and the Girl". But towards the end of his short life he only allowed Death to speak here, not the girl. A death that, however, appears comforting: "Be of good courage! I am not wild," says the corresponding passage of the song that Schubert used as the basis for the music. The popular subtitle of the quartet only became established after his death, and if you ignore it for a moment, you see an example of what is probably the most important chamber music genre, which is downright enormous for another reason too: its immense length makes it one of the longest string quartets in music history, which is actually a small symphony.

Death and the Maiden

The Old Town Hall Goettingen

After the successful performance of the first Slam Symphony in 2024, the continuation of the unheard-of word-sound combinations now follows. The spoken word poets Tanasgol Sabbagh, Sulaiman Masomi and Dalibor Marković now negotiate the broad field of interpersonal relationships - it is about all forms of love.

Slam Symphony II LOVE

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

New Year's Concert

Bad Sooden-Allendorf

Bleckeder Brauhaus

Bürgerhaus Südheide

Concert Theatre Coesfeld

FORUM MELLE - vertreten durch die Solbad Melle GmbH

Gymnasium Alfeld

Gymnasium Uslar

Lessingtheater

Johann Strauss (son) was a phenomenon in music history. A composer who combined, indeed merged, the entertainment character of the Viennese waltz with the seriousness of classical music in such a way that a very unique genre was created that was highly valued by all. What makes this special fascination can be examined again and again at the turn of the year, when hits such as "On the Beautiful Blue Danube" or the "Emperor Waltz" are not just used as background music for dance, but are enjoyed in the concert hall. But do you know "Copenhagen's Steam Railway Galop" by the Danish composer Hans Christian Lumbye? Or the young Ukrainian trombonist Polina Tarasenko, who plays works by Ferdinand David, Camille Saint-Saëns and Giacomo Puccini here? No? Then it's time before 2025 comes!

Einbeck New Year's Concert

New Year's Eve concert

Following the Second Piano Concerto in November, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony follows. What a work—one that, unfortunately, often remains somewhat overshadowed by many other late-Romantic symphonies! Here, Chief Conductor Nicholas Milton elevates it to the repertoire, allowing its lush sonic power to fully unfold, especially exploding in the final movement. Before that, Elisabeth Brauß revives another fascinating work by Anna Clyne, the Composer in Focus. "Atlas," her first piano concerto, was written in 2023 and was inspired by a publication about the artist Gerhard Richter: "My music responds to the images contained in these four volumes
to create a musical montage and a lucid narrative."

Atlas

Why not try something different? Let's break the rules! We want to create a concert experience with you that can be experienced with all of your senses. Moving around, why not? Drinking at the concert, absolutely! Bathing in sound, definitely! Seeing and hearing from many perspectives! This evening, you can shape your own listening experience, and we can get to know each other anew. Is listening better in the dark or with a glass of wine in hand? The idea for this project arose from a joint initiative of the GSO to demonstrate how relevant an orchestra is in times of social disruption. We emphasize the connection to our senses and fellow human beings. Classical music is relevant, and we want to re-establish its social anchoring!

Concert for all Senses

There are those film songs that you hear – and they immediately switch on your mind's eye. It could be one of the swaggering symphonic rock ballads from "James Bond." A catchy tune from George and Ira Gershwin. The waltz from Coppola's "The Godfather." Or, of course, one of the incredibly numerous melodies by Hans Zimmer and John Williams – the two Hollywood assembly-line composers. Who already has sounds in their ears and images in their minds? And we haven't even had to mention "Jaws." Or the bow of an old cruise ship... This evening with chief conductor Nicholas Milton and singer Mary Carewe, who has transformed many concert stages into cinema screens, promises goosebumps moments with a guaranteed 90 percent recognition rate.

A Night at the Oscars

Guest performance in Hann. Münden

St. Blasius, Hann. Münden

Guest performance in Wolfenbüttel

Guest performance in Duderstadt

Guest performance Coesfeld

Konzert Theater Coesfeld 

Guest performance in Weikersheim

Tauber Philharmonic, Weikersheim

It was England's first major violin concerto. It quickly became clear that it was by no means banal or purely artistic – after all, in his Opus 61, performed here by the British composer Anthony Marwood, Edward Elgar had laid bare nothing less than his innermost being. Even the Finn Jean Sibelius, whose value has long since been fully recognized after initial public skepticism, famously didn't create a single banal bar. His last symphony, premiered in the 1920s, is, like its predecessors, dark and profoundly serious, emotionally gripping, and, with just one movement, formally revolutionary. The second half of the concert, conducted by Anna Rakitina, opens with a cheerful work by the early Haydn: his Symphony
"Morning" features a beautiful sunrise.

Change

One of perhaps two handfuls of the most famous works in the entire history of music is exactly 300 years old – and still enjoys immense popularity: Antonio Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" is actually a collection of four violin concertos that capture the seasons in impressively audible tones. Spring thunders and lightning, summer suffers from the heat, farmers celebrate in autumn, and winter bites with cold. We hear the forces of nature, animal sounds, and human life in the cycle of a year. Host Thomas Scholz takes the young listeners on a journey through Vivaldi's masterpiece, which not only demonstrates the capabilities of program music, but also the versatility of a solo violin's sound.

The Four Seasons

Attention Dvořák fans: After the Fifth Symphony in the fifth symphony concert, here follows his Seventh – perhaps the most serious, but possibly also the most deeply moving, by the Bohemian musician, who over time conquered Europe and the USA. But those who focus only on this classic can easily overlook the others in this concert. Annabel Hauk, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1999, plays cello in Robert Schumann's A minor Concerto, which offers the solo instrument a pleasing amount of scope for elegiac expression and, as one of the first works from his Düsseldorf period, still exudes a great deal of joie de vivre. It is only fitting that chief conductor Nicholas Milton opens the morning with Weber's Freischütz Overture, as it is equally rich in color.

Mystical

As valuable as this treasure is, sometimes the focus on the individual geniuses of Central European music obscures the view of the incredible diversity surrounding it. How many melodies from village and peasant wedding musicians are still to be discovered! In this chamber concert, Angelina Nalbantova from Bulgaria and Nico Gutu from Moldova show us what Eastern Europe, including Romania, as well as Argentina, France, and Spain, have to offer in this broad field. The proximity to improvised jazz is almost always palpable – the focus is on Chick Corea's masterpiece "Spain." Violin and accordion are the flexible instruments, a perfect fit here, as they stand in stark contrast to the large symphony orchestra. Have a good trip out into the wide world!

Worldwide treasures

Igor Stravinsky's musical theater piece, written for a traveling theater, premiered in Lausanne in September 1918—six weeks before the end of the First World War. The fairy tale of the soldier who sells himself to the devil tells of the uprooting of an entire wartime generation. This groundbreaking work, in musical theater terms, will be combined in our performance with one of the most impressive cantatas of the 17th century: "How desolate lies the city." Written by the Hamburg organist Matthias Weckmann in 1663 under the impression of a devastating plague epidemic, the piece paints a vivid picture of human despair in the face of senseless destruction. The combination of the two pieces creates a hauntingly timeless evening that lies somewhere between musical theater and spatial installation.

Story of the Soldier

For centuries, women were barred from performing in public, let alone formulating their own artistic positions. Even classical music is still not exempt from this. Slam Symphony III brings together music by female composers and modern linguistic art. It is a bold attempt to explore language and speechlessness simultaneously. What can language describe, what can poetry explain that cannot otherwise be explained, and what does it say when it falls silent at certain points while the music continues? This is where the power of radical softness becomes apparent: through empathy and vulnerability, voices become audible that were previously barely heard. The poets present their texts among and on works by female composers such as Anna Clyne, Emilie Mayer, and Britta Byström.

Slam Symphony – Sprach:Lo!

A concert like a tender confession. It begins with a lament and ends with a departure. In between, sound spaces unfold that offer protection while daring to be open. Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" resonates with painful beauty. Lisa Streich composed "Mantel" as a piece about coverings: about what they conceal and what shines through them. A fragile texture emerges that protects and conceals. But what lies beneath? In Caroline Shaw's "Entr'acte," we hear more than a harmless interlude: full of lightness and wit, it surprises with unexpected twists. And then: spring. Schumann's First Symphony allows hope to blossom with every note. Those who allow themselves to be carried by Schumann's momentum sense that even departure requires vulnerability. And how radically vibrant a new beginning can sound!

Spring Coat

A wonderfully vibrant evening to close the season! Is there a more shimmering, more thrilling piece of exotic music than the Bacchanale from Camille Saint-Saëns' opera "Samson et Dalila"? Hardly. This is followed by
Anna Clyne's "Quarter Days," which premiered only in 2023 and which the new Composer in Focus series describes as a reflection on the passage of time: "both within a minute, a day, the seasons, and even within an entire lifetime." And finally, the then-revolutionary "Symphonie fantastique" by the Frenchman Hector Berlioz, now indestructible as a clever popular hit, is a captivating evening with Nicholas Milton and the Elaia Quartet from Berlin, who know how to shape the profoundly human passage of time into soaring tones!

Göttinger Symphonieorchester

Mar 20, 2026

Atlas

Mar 28, 2026

Concert for all Senses

10 - 18 Apr, 2026

A Night at the Oscars

Apr 11, 2026

Guest performance in Hann. Münden

Apr 12, 2026

Guest performance in Wolfenbüttel

Mar 9, 2026

Academy Concert

Mar 8, 2026

Glasslands

Articles & News

Göttinger Symphonieorchester