The shepherds play an important role in Polish Christmas tales and songs, the Kolenden. They symbolize the simplicity, laughter and faith of the people who worship the baby Jesus: » Let’s all go to the stable!  « says one of the most beautiful Polish Christmas carols, which really makes your legs twitch and you can feel the shepherds running off together in their great joy. » Hej, Kolenda!  « is the motto of our Christmas concert, the centerpiece of which is a nativity play set to music. Some of the most popular kolendas are played, including the famous » Luleise, Jesulein «, which was sung to Frédéric Chopin by his mother.

Hey Kolenda!

Kreuzkirche Bonn

Two years ago, a young conductor thrilled orchestra and audience alike with a poetic programme and exciting conducting: now Hossein Pishkar is back with a programme that is at least as exciting. Two important orchestral works about two lovers form the programme: one work is a first highlight of the art of orchestration – excerpts from Hector Berlioz‘ Roméo et Juliette. Music about the theatre’s most famous tragic lovers. The second is one of the masterpieces of the early 20th century by Maurice Ravel, centred around the most beautiful happy love story of antiquity: Daphnis and Chloé, a pair of youthful, shy shepherds in love. And right in the middle of it all: The shooting star of Romantic music, the clarinet, personified on this evening by the wonderful Sharon Kam. The Israeli-born clarinettist plays works that are related to the above-mentioned works and were written 100 years apart: Carl Maria von Weber’s Clarinet Concerto No. 1 and Claude Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie.

BeethovenNacht

Theater Bonn Opera House

Clarinet sounds instead of flute sounds: we had to change our programme for our first concert at the Bundesrat: Our three string colleagues* are now presenting our audience with an evening centred on the interplay between string instruments and the clarinet. Krzysztof Penderecki’s darkly luminous clarinet quartet opens the evening, followed by the serenade for string trio by Ernst von Doer, which is filled with a charming joy of playing and rhythmic vigour.

Clarinet Sounds

Old Federal Councilor

Just open the garden door and start walking – because there’s so much to discover! Peter takes you on a musical journey through the forest, where birds chirp, cats meow and ducks quack. But always watch out for the wolf and prick up your ears!

EPSG:4326

Peter and the Wolf

Schauspielhaus Bad Godesberg

Gingerbread and candy canes, candlelight and the smell of pine needles – Christmas days are filled with cosiness and magic. Even for Clara and her new friend, the Nutcracker. The two of them take you on a Christmas adventure into the fantastic realm of the Mouse King and Princess Pirlepat.

Crack nuts and start dancing

Large-scale chamber music with piano from the Romantic period almost always means expansive arrangements, sweeping themes, sharp contrasts and tonal opulence. Our solo horn player, Geoffrey Winter, has put together a program for the opening of our chamber concert season at the Beethoven-Haus, in which Johannes Brahms‘ early horn trio is certainly the best-known piece, but not the longest. Why do composers compose? The highly romantic program around piano and horn, one piece more beautiful than the other, provides three answers to this question – and we find that these answers do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the composition, its quality, its accessibility or its details: The young Johannes Brahms composed (at least part of) his trio when he was mourning the death of his mother. Mourning, coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Walter Rabl submitted his Quartet op. 1 to a composition competition and won a prize – the jury included none other than the now graying and famous Johannes Brahms. And Zdeněk Fibich’s themes for his piano quintet come in part from his thoroughly erotic musical diary, a collection of hundreds of piano pieces that the composer wrote for his lover, pupil and librettist Anežka Schulzová. And what does this music do to us? Everyone has to find out for themselves …

Piano quintet

Beethoven-Haus Bonn

When Martin Grubinger announced his retirement from the concert stage two years ago, people wondered who could step into his shoes. A whole flood of outstanding percussionists applied to succeed him. By BaseCamp 2023 at the latest, we had taken Vivi Vassileva, a young percussionist from Upper Franconia with Bulgarian roots, to our hearts. Anyone who has seen and heard her sweep through a whole park of percussion instruments and make metal, skins and wood sound will never forget it. The young percussionist and ancient instruments, archaic rhythms and contemporary music: for the Finnish composer Sauli Zinovjev, the ritual component of percussion is of great importance, even while he is writing his new percussion concerto, which Vivi Vassileva and we have commissioned. The rite and the rites, constancy and change: these are the topics of our Spiegel discussion, to which Dirk Kaftan and Bettina Böttinger jointly invite you.

Rituale

An endless melody. The clarinet weaves its threads further and further – so far that it is impossible to say exactly where the theme ends. Perhaps one of the longest and most moving adagio themes in symphonic literature. Deep calm, bright beauty: this is the beginning of the slow movement of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2 – after the passionate turbulence of its first movement and the fierce whirls of the second, you almost didn’t expect it. But Rachmaninov explores the whole circle of human emotions in this symphonic giant, which is rarely performed in Germany. The work was last performed by the Beethoven Orchestra in 2008 under its Ukrainian General Music Director Roman Kofman.music as a powerhouse of emotions: This idea unites the composers Sauli Zinovjev and Sergei Rachmaninov, who are separated by 115 years of musical history. Rachmaninov described music as a » mirror of life «, Zinoviev is convinced that a whole life can be reflected in a piece of music, indeed in a single moment. During the creation of this season’s issue, Sauli Zinovjev is writing a percussion concerto for the percussionist Vivi Vassileva (see also Im Spiegel 1) and for us. We are looking forward to his music and to the musical powerhouse Vivi Vassileva!

Powerhouse of Emotions

How did a single piece of music suddenly change everything? By a resourceful musician and engineer presenting a new musical instrument to a famous composer and persuading him to write for this new instrument: This happened when Anton Weidinger presented Joseph Haydn with a trumpet with which it was possible to play all the notes of the scale with the help of a new system of keys and no longer had to make do with a slightly extended natural tone series. Joseph Haydn recognised the possibilities of the keyed trumpet and wrote the work that is still the most famous trumpet concerto 200 years later. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy claimed that the keyed trumpet sounded » castrated « as it was not yet technically mature. Nevertheless, it led to more and more engineers and instrument makers trying to build trumpets that were similarly variable but sounded better. Pure trumpet: What was possible on a trumpet before Joseph Haydn? Where does the trumpet sound even come from? These are questions that we want to answer in the second pur of the season. And who could be better suited to introduce the audience to the secrets of the instrument and the greatest turning point in its history than Reinhold Friedrich, who has been one of the absolute world leaders for decades. He is not only a gifted brass player, but also a highly esteemed teacher and eloquent speaker! We are looking forward to the dream combination Pur – Haydn – Friedrich …

Pure Trumpets

Deutsche Telekom AG

Eternal Love

In our Pur series, which has become a hit with audiences in recent years, we put a well-known piece of classical music centre stage: a good half hour of talk, then the work in progress. Pur is attended by specialists and beginners, people who know the works almost by heart and those who are perhaps attending the concert for the first time. And the feedback is: everyone takes something away with them! A relaxed atmosphere, a manageable concert length and the opportunity to have a nice chat after the concert: who wouldn’t want to become a » Pur-ist «? The first is the second, and the second is the first. But actually, the first is the third and the second is really the second, because the zero is the first. But now let’s get things in order: there is hardly any talk of a zero – the young Beethoven’s sketches for a piano concerto in E-flat major – today. Ludwig van Beethoven was not convinced for a long time about his next piano concerto, the one in B-flat major, which is now known as the Second Concerto and whose sketches date back to his time in Bonn. He hesitated to publish it and reworked it several times. The C-major-concerto, on the other hand, apparently appealed to him. It seemed suitable for his Viennese debut as a pianist with orchestra! And so we have the nomenclatural salad. The good thing is: once you are sitting in the concert hall, these confusions are uninteresting, because both the 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos have their fully developed personality and captivate us. We have not yet reached the stormy, grim, symphonic Beethoven of the 5th Symphony or the 3rd Piano Concerto – but we must not forget that the composer was just 25 years old in the mid-1790s: smartly dressed in the latest fashion, with a short hairstyle, on his way to conquer the world capital of music, Vienna, with his stormy, witty, passionate and profound piano playing. Finally back with us as a guest pianist and in conversation: the pianist Luisa Imorde from Bonn!

Beethoven's First

Telekom Forum

The orchestra enters, starts tuning the instruments, the conductor enters the stage to thunderous applause and… What is that? It’s not the one symphony by Beethoven on the music stands! No, it’s a new symphony, put together by you, the audience. Help decide which movements from which of Beethoven’s symphonies should be performed today. Because we are embarking on a democratic musical journey!

Your Beethoven!

What does a mass written today sound like with themes that reflect the diverse realities of life? The Berlin collective A Song For You explores this question on the basis of Beethoven’s Missa solemnis. The 52-member BiPOC collective A Song For You stands for an organic fusion of neo-soul, R’n’B and hip hop with dance, performance and art. Together with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, it is developing its very own, soulful version of a Missa exclusively for the Beethovenfest.

A Soulful Missa

Your Beethoven! Family Concert 1

Diversity and contradiction, modernity and tradition: this is what characterises the music year 1923, into which we plunge with our Freitagskonzert 1. In the first part of the concert, the Spanish pianist, arranger, concert designer and musical jack-of-all-trades Iñigo Giner Miranda will help us to transform some of the most important works of the year into a kaleidoscopic production. He helps us to bring this time of contrasts, in which the » Roaring Twenties « and mass unemployment, Schönberg and Lehár met, to life on the Bonn opera stage. Béla Bartók and Germaine Tailleferre, Dmitri Shostakovich and Kurt Weill, orchestral works and chamber music, high glamour and tonal rebelliousness come together. The second part features Shostakovich’s first symphonic work, which was composed in the very year began to grow in the mind of the St Petersburg student in 1923: Rousing, tempestuously youthful, but at the same time masterfully and perfectly written! Three years later, in the diploma concert at the university, it was a huge success and the start of Shostakovich’s world career …

1923 Friday Concert 1

This year’s Hofkapellen season does not begin as usual with an » unearthed « piece that has been lying dormant in an archive for 200 years and needs to be kissed awake by our musicians. But it starts with music that was played in Bonn: music from two of the most important musical families of the 18th century. When the thunderbolt boy Wolfgang Amadeus stopped off in London at the age of eight, the Mozart family befriended the youngest son of the famous St Thomas-Kantor: Johann Christian Bach was an elegant figure, a bon vivant and composer in the gallant style. But he was not the only influence on the travelling child prodigy. His eldest brother Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach – a very contrasting, rather austere figure – was later even described by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as his » musical father «. The programme includes a festive symphony by Johann Christian Bach, a stormy cello concerto by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and – as a symphonic coupling – a four-movement version of Mozart’s magnificent Posthorn Serenade. But Johann Sebastian Bach, who is at the centre of the Bach family for us today, should not be missing from this concert: If there is enough applause, the audience will experience in the encore which lines of music by Papa Bach were found on the back of a sketch by the teenager Ludwig van B. … Music that was most likely performed in Bonn at the time – at one of the leading musical courts in Europe!

Mozart und die Bäche

Kurhaus Bad Honnef

The Redoubt

The Days of Exile are an audience-oriented program of events and encounters. It gives people in exile a platform, builds a bridge between the present and the past and encourages dialog and understanding between old and new citizens in order to contribute to better cohesion in the city. The Days of Exile will take place from August 30 to September 14, 2024 in cooperation between the Körber Stiftung and the Bundesstadt Bonn.

Hoffnung ist das Federding

Museum August Macke Haus

Large pillars, a seemingly infinite space, the feeling of a connection between heaven and earth: Bonn Minster has been open again since late autumn 2021 after several years of renovation and amazes you when you enter the light-flooded room. It offers spiritual perspectives even before the first word has been spoken or the first note heard. We have already had the pleasure of making music in this special room several times: There was the Wandelkonzert, where the audience could move around the musicians. The concert as part of the Beethovenfest 2023, where the audience remained in their seats while the orchestra moved through the nave during the programme. And the church was home to two benefit concerts that our musicians organised on a private initiative together with the city deanery for earthquake victims in Turkey and for victims of the war in Ukraine. Now we are returning with music that seems to have been made for the cathedral basilica in terms of its dimensions, sound and spirituality: to mark the 200th anniversary of Anton Bruckner’s birth, we are performing his 9th Symphony – » dedicated to God « – and his magnificent Te Deum, which in a way complements the unfinished symphony, bringing it to a striking conclusion. In a time of isolation, of the celebration of the individual, Bruckner’s music, which in many ways points far ahead into the modern age, is a manifesto of the collective and of togetherness. For us at the start of the season, at a time when we hope that the end of the Beethovenhalle’s renovation is approaching, it is also an invocation of the community of space, performers and audience.

Dem lieben Gott

Bonner Münster

The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world! The building was opened in 1888 and today, with its red carpets and glowing golden interior, conveys a concert atmosphere the moment you enter. The steep stairs leading down from the backstage area to the stage are feared by the artists – but once you have made it to the podium, you are rewarded by the acoustics, which connoisseurs rank with the legendary Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna. Just like in Vienna, you don't really realize the size of the hall inside: after all, the hall holds around 2000 seats, almost 1000 seats more than the Bonn Opera House … We are very much looking forward to this guest performance, where , after a long absence in Amsterdam, we want to present Beethoven!

Guest Concert Essen

The Concertgebouw

Once again we invite guests from Bonn and the surrounding area to make music with us. And this time it will be international, because in addition to enthusiastic symphonic-orchestral musicians of all ages, we have artists* from different countries and traditions as guests. We celebrate the diversity of music on this globe by discovering musical worlds that are usually quite far away from a symphony orchestra. Like this: Hats on – and take off!

Open Philharmonics

In hardly any other part of the world do people celebrate Mittsommar as extensively as in the Scandinavian countries. Nowhere else is it light for so long in the evening, nowhere else are people so grateful to have escaped the darkness of the winter months for a while … And that’s why this year we’re turning the Kunst!Rasen into a dance floor with an imaginary Mittsommar tree.

Klassik!Picknick – Thank you for the music

Freizeitpark Rheinaue

All people become brothers: that is a demand, a utopia, a pipe dream. Perhaps it will become reality if it is hurled into the world in emphasis, as Beethoven did in his 9th Symphony? In our fourth concert, Im Spiegel , we are reconciling two anniversaries: May not only marked the 200th anniversary of the premiere of the Ninth Symphony, but also the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. The founding fathers and mothers of our constitution had dreams, wishes and ideas about how people wanted and should live together in Germany after the defeat of the National Socialists' regime of terror. They did not cast these ideas in a work of art, but in legal texts. What about our living together and its representation or the pre-formulations of our future living together in art? Dirk Kaftan talks to Matthias Brandt, who is not only a great artist but also an astute observer of social contexts.

All people

It is 200 years since Ludwig van Beethoven's most important symphony saw the light of day in Vienna. We bring it to the stage with a magnificent cast. And against one of the heaviest works of Bönn's Panz, we place one of his lightest (for all its expansiveness): his light-flooded Violin Concerto. It is no coincidence that the last movement of the Ninth is in D major, just like the Violin Concerto. We have great soloists and choirs this evening – it's hard to single out anyone. We are particularly pleased with the fusion of two outstanding choirs, namely the WDR Rundfunkchor and “our” Bonner Opernchor.

Götterfunken

What do we find in Beethoven today? What does Beethoven find in us? b+ wants to lead young people to listen and inspire them. For one semester, different school classes work thematically on the individual movements of the symphony. The pupils develop their own artistic contributions to Beethoven's music together with artists, music teachers and their teachers. In various forms and genres, be it dance, music, text or visual art, they present their work at the final concert together with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn conducted by Dirk Kaftan.

Jugendkonzert b+

In January 1941, 40,000 French prisoners lived in the STALAG VIIIA camp in Görlitz, among them the composer Olivier Messiaen. He finished his Quatuor pour la fin du Temps there under almost unimaginable conditions and performed it for the first time with three other fellow prisoners. »The audience was a very diverse mix of all walks of life – rural workers, auxiliaries, intellectuals, professional soldiers, doctors and clergy. “Never again have they listened to me with such attention and understanding as they did then,” the composer later recalled. As it says in a documentary by ARTE: »The first performance was attended by about 400 listeners. Starving, freezing people, far from their homeland – in the Silesian no man's land fascinated by this so strange, crystalline, transcendent music.« There are some chamber music works of the twentieth century for which you don't have to be a specialist in new music to be deeply touched by them. They push the doors to other dimensions wide open, lead us into other spheres of consciousness. This includes Messiaen's spiritual Quatuor pour la fin du temps , but it also includes Bartók's magnificent Trio Contrasts , written just over a year before Messiaen's quartet. How Bartók translates the old Hungarian verbunkos dance into the tonal language of the 20th century, how he fuses elements of jazz and new music, how he assigns instruments their own contrasting roles – this is still new, exciting, moving today. The great jazz clarinetist had commissioned the work from Béla Bartók shortly before his emigration to America. Two works by exiles, prisoners, which still grip us today as if they were written only yesterday – in a way that only great chamber music can! In between, the piano trio by Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story , written a year earlier than Bartók's Contrasts: a youthful work, a wild and yet compelling mix in which Bernstein takes us on a trip through counterpoint and atonality, through Gypsy style and jazz, through zones of calm and breathless chase.

To the End of Time

Welcome, bienvenue, youkoso – ready for take-off! A trip around the world in just 60 minutes – no problem for the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn! With astronaut Martina Menichetti, we beam out into space and take a look at the blue planet from the outside. From there, we travel to the vastness of the Sahara, to the mysterious bamboo forests of Japan, to the carnival in Rio de Janeiro and to the exciting city life of Buenos Aires. How is that supposed to work? With a full tank of music!

A Planet Called Earth

The combination of talk and music has been a matter close to Dirk Kaftan's heart since the first Beethoven Lounge . And what exciting topics we have not already dealt with in the Beethoven Lounges : Of course, in the now seemingly infinitely distant year of 2020, it was all about our Ludwig and his anniversary. But starting from Beethoven's advocacy of freedom and equality, we have continued to pursue these themes in the Beethoven Lounge . Artists from a wide range of disciplines, but also politicians, people from the worlds of sport, business and environmental protection talked with Dirk Kaftan about what moves them. Of course, the focus was often on Bonn, but he also looked beyond German topics to Madagascar and Colombia. The same applies here as to the choice of music: You can be curious!

Beethoven-Lounge 3

Pantheon Theatre

When Antonín Dvorák wrote his Ninth Symphony, he wanted to process his impressions of America – a new world for him at the time. The beautiful melodies of the symphony are still famous and loved today. But what does a new world sound like today? What does a new world sound like for children? What utopias, dreams and wishes do they have for their future? In addition to the Dvorák Symphony, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn will play compositions by children who will musically explore the question of a new world and thus literally write music for the future.

Aus der neuen Welt

Taking Beethoven outside! At last it's possible again, at last the Beethoven Orchestra is going on tour again as Bonn's ambassador. And of course we will be on the road with Beethoven when we travel to the Bavarian metropolis of Munich, to beautiful Carinthia in Villach and to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, a vibrant city of art and artists.

Guest performance concert Ljubljana

Cankarjev dom

One of the most important German string quartets in the world is the guest ensemble in our chamber concert series, which is otherwise performed entirely by our own musicians. This concert with a guest ensemble is made possible by our cooperation with the Foundation House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany, which in recent years has brought us performances by the  Vision String Quartets  and most recently the  Azahar-Ensembles . 23 May 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the ceremony in which the German Basic Law was signed in the Old Bundesrat – a good reason for events around the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany and its myths. The  Signum Quartett  has brought a program with it, the first part of which is dedicated to this theme: the melody of Joseph Haydn's  Kaiserhymne  did not become the official national anthem again until 1952 but nevertheless the »God Save Franz the Kaiser«, or, as we know it: “Unity and justice and freedom” is a symbol of the beginnings of our republic. The other compositions in this half of the program, which revolve around the theme of Arcadia, go back much further: That Greek land of legends and myths, where happy shepherds pursued a carefree life. Later generalized for a country in which all inhabitants would be happy … Whether this was the idea with which the mothers and fathers of the Basic Law set to work in autumn 1948 may be doubted – nevertheless, it is the function of music to conjure up dreams of other worlds.

Arcadia

House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany

Taking Beethoven outside! At last it’s possible again, at last the Beethoven Orchestra is going on tour again as Bonn’s ambassador. And of course we will be on the road with Beethoven when we travel to the Bavarian metropolis of Munich, to beautiful Carinthia in Villach and to the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, a vibrant city of art and artists.

Gastspielkonzert Villach

Congress Center Villach

Gastspielkonzert München

Prinz-Regent-Theater

Imagine you could listen to Ludwig van Beethoven composing! Crawl into his cerebral convolutions. That’s exactly what Gerard McBurney’s radio play with live orchestra X-Rayed is about. Matthias Brandt has lent his voice to Ludwig van Beethoven: He wonders where to buy his coffee beans and when the piano tuner is coming. He muses about underwear and double counterpoint. And we are immersed in the acoustic world of Biedermeier Vienna with its coffee houses, its hackney carriages and Beethoven’s scratchy quill. An immersive sound experience in which we witness the genesis of the intoxicating Seventh Symphony: This was conceived by Gerard McBurney, the English composer, radio producer, educator and programme maker who has worked for and with the world’s most distinguished conductors since the 1990s: Simon Rattle, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and, above all and for a long time: Pierre Boulez. For him, McBurney devised more than 70 »Children’s Concerts for Adults« over a ten-year period in Chicago. Multimedia concert experiences that opened the ears of the audience and left them speechless: Enchanted and enraptured by what they discovered new in seemingly familiar music. The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn enters into a live dialogue with the surround sound experience of McBurney’s radio play – an absolutely novel listening experience.

X-Rayed

Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, Little Thumbelina and the Empress of the Pagodas – composer Maurice Ravel brings our beloved fairy-tale characters to life, and does so with the power of music alone! As if the musical thinker had painted with a paint box, so luminous are the worlds of sound that we discover with flute, cello and piano. Music for children and at the same time great art for adults.

Mother Goose

Music is life: Life in its purest form, happy and sad, deep and shallow, dramatic and poetic. This is what the Fourth Symphony by the Danish composer Carl Nielsen is about. There is no program, says Nielsen, but the elementary components of life are found directly in the music, flowing through it. With the Norwegian conductor Rune Bergmann we travel to the (far) north: Besides Nielsen's symphony, there is the Cantus Arcticus by the Finn Einojuhani Rautavaara and the famous piano concerto by the Norwegian Edvard Grieg. One often has the feeling of directly experiencing, tasting, seeing the landscapes of the North, their fresh colors, their traditions in music from the Scandinavian countries. And not only in pieces with such an obvious programmatic background as Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus , which is described in the subtitle as a concerto for birds and orchestra: Bird sounds are added to the sound of the instruments via tape. Spring voices of the birds in the marshland, the melancholy song of the lark, the longing calls of migrating swans … Grieg's piano concerto tells us of cheerful folk festivals, of the rough landscape of the fjords, of the longing for light and warmth – or perhaps just of music? Which brings us back to Nielsen, to the powerful, moving sound paintings of his Fourth Symphony: The indelible – does music only tell us about music here too? Rune Bergmann and the French star pianist Lise de la Salle invite us to find out in concert.

Refreshing

We have been working with David P. Graham for years. The Rhineland composer with British roots has set up inspiring youth projects in which children and teenagers rose above themselves and wrote music that really moved their audience. David P. Graham's son Philip also became a musician. He is a member of the Notos Quartet , considered one of the leading chamber music ensembles of our time. »What would happen,« David P. Graham asked himself, »if I wrote a concerto for the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the Notos Quartet ? « A concert, one might add, that could be performed in Bonn's coolest concert hall? The idea was put into practice, and so our 2024 edition of BaseCamp Neue Musik revolves around the premiere of a new work – for the first time, because up to now we have only staged revivals of contemporary music at BaseCamp.

BaseCamp New Music

BaseCamp Young Hostel

In the meantime, Beethoven was not at all enthusiastic about the success of his Septet op. 20, which was premiered together with the First Symphony and the First Piano Concerto in 1800: The work for seven instruments, which followed Mozart's great Divertimento K. 563 in the same key exactly in its structure, was Beethoven's most popular work at the time and also his most frequently performed until around 1830. Beethoven probably felt that this septet, which was close to the light music of his time, blocked the view of his “serious” compositions! Today, we can consider ourselves fortunate to gain a glimpse of the humorous, the youthful and mercurial Beethoven through this 45-minute piece. Of course, as always with Beethoven, this does not preclude great depth and complexity: In the Adagio, the second and longest movement, time simply stops. We juxtapose Beethoven's work with similarly large-scale, generous chamber music: Namely, the rarely played Octet by Stuttgart-born August Walter – one of those pieces that makes one wonder, in the justice of music history, why this wonderful, brilliant, deeply felt great work was not known before?

Brillant

Traffic obstructions must be expected on April 14, 2024 due to the Bonn Marathon. Please take this into account when planning your journey!

The Orchestra Profile

Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany

The most famous composer in his country – that didn't count for much in England around 1900. But one with world renown, one whom Richard Strauss cheered on and called “master”: Edward Elgar had something to be proud of. He appeared on the world stage with a double blow, namely with his Enigma Variations in 1899, and then, just in time for the turn of the century, with his oratorio The Dream of Gerontius . Incidentally, it was after its German premiere in Düsseldorf in 1902 that the composer of Zarathustra and Till Eulenspiegel made the aforementioned toast! A new oratorio in the land of choirs, in the land that had witnessed the birth of Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elias : this caused a sensation, and although the premiere turned into a disaster in Elgar's eyes due to lack of preparation, the work was enthusiastically celebrated by the audience and critics from the very beginning! The work is not to be found in our records of the last 20 years – all the more reason to play it in our Good Friday concert. Thomas Guggeis, one of the absolute shooting stars of the international scene, requested it for his debut with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn. Guggeis is the newly appointed head conductor at the Frankfurt Opera, and that at the youthful age of just 30. Guggeis had a sensational breakthrough in 2018 when he stood in for Christoph von Dohnányi in the dress rehearsal of Richard Strauss's Salome at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. We look forward to performing Elgar's magnificent oratorio with him, the Karthäuserkantorei and the Philharmonic Choir!

Transmigration of Souls

The German Music Competition, founded in 1975 by the German Music Council, is aimed at professional musicians aged 18 to 30 and is held annually for various solo and chamber music ensembles as well as for composition. The competition has four rounds and offers, among other things, the opportunity to present a program of one's own design. The multifaceted support measures include the arrangement of solo and chamber concerts, individual career counseling as well as CD productions. The final concert with the winners of the competition and the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn is the highlight of this event, which sets the course for the soloists. On March 20 and 21, 2024, the final rounds of the German Music Competition will take place with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn. The public is also welcome to attend.

German Music Competition Prizewinners' Concert

University of Bonn

Many filmgoers still have the scene in their mind's eye in which a gramophone stands in the African savannah and dreamy sounds float above the endless expanse: Jenwärts von Afrika is the name of the film with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, and Mozart's clarinet concerto is part of the soundtrack – a symbol of the love between the two main characters, and also a symbol of their love for the continent. Mozart's last instrumental concerto is one of the most frequently performed works of classical concert literature, and actually we don't have to ask why: it goes too directly to the heart, it hits us all too directly, we already have the feeling of knowing it from previous lives the first time we hear it. And yet we want to dare to listen more closely, to look: How can we approach this iconic piece?

Mozart concertante

Our musicians are not only first-class orchestra members, high-ranking soloists and enthusiastic chamber musicians: They are also part of the large network of musicians spanning all genres. Whether they make excursions into non-European music, like Hans Joachim Mohrmann, or help young musicians to get started, like Thomas Ludes: An orchestra is a nucleus for cultural and social activities, far beyond our own work! For example, there is the connection to the singers of the theater: when Thomas Ludes asked Marie Heeschen if she would like to do an evening with a wind quintet, she immediately and spontaneously agreed. Such a quintet as Solisti Bonna is a true musical chameleon that adapts to the circumstances and the partners and takes us into different musical realms with its countless colors. And so we can look forward to an evening with Marie Heeschen's bell-bright soprano voice and the virtuoso sounds of Solisti Bonna : In the first part with the tongue-in-cheek Paul Hindemith and some dazzling songs by Gustav Mahler, in the second part with pure romanticism: Briccialdi's quintet and the balmy airs breathing Les nuits d'ete by Hector Berlioz.

Wunderhorn

Video game music is a genre of its own. With its own laws, with its own composers. In any case, it is music influenced by the great film soundtracks, and before that by composers like Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Majestic, opulent, colorful! And it's music with its own fans, some of whom travel a long way, celebrating their musical heroines like Star Wars fans celebrate Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda or Princess Leia. Conductor and composer Eímear Noone is one such heroine of the genre. She has composed the music for some of the biggest and most famous video games – those whose names you know even as a layman and which stand for strange and exciting worlds, multi-layered gaming fun and an incredibly large community: Zelda, Super Mario and World of Warcraft , to name but a few. We are delighted to be able to present Eímear Noone to our audience at the Telekom Forum – with a program of absolute highlights specially put together by her. Joysticks out, headphones on – and let's go!

Games in Concert

In the three years of the Beethoven-Lounge , many exciting musical contributions have come onto the stage: With orchestra and without, classical and modern, serious and tongue-in-cheek. Some may remember the first Beethoven Lounge in 2020, in which the world-class pianist Kit Armstrong shrank the Pantheon hall to 88 keys. Or the crazy a cappella singing of mummy's children. Or the fusion of the Beethoven Orchestra and the Federal Youth Orchestra with a specially composed Beethoven Mish Mash by Wolf Kerschek. Not to forget the excerpts from Beethoven's symphonies, which our orchestra musicians performed fearlessly and soloistically in the individually cast “Corona versions”. The musical program items of the Beethoven Lounges often result from the composition of the guests and in connection with the topics of conversation – so you can be curious!

Beethoven-Lounge 2

Actually, the great musician Chouchane Siranossian had planned to perform Andreas Romberg's Violin Concerto No. 8 in E-flat major with us in autumn 2022 – then she fell ill at short notice and our concertmaster Mikhail Ovrutsky stepped in. We are happy that we can make up for the meeting of the young Armenian-French violinist and our orchestra so quickly , and that the research team at the University of Vienna has discovered another Romberg violin concerto that had been lost for 200 years: Once again a true revival in our Hofkapellen series! And if the 7th concerto is just as virtuosic, elegant and ravishing as the 8th concerto, we can all look forward to this rebirth. To this end, we will take a closer look at Count Waldstein in this concert and the audience can play “Original and Falsification”: The young Beethoven had written his so-called Ritterballett for a celebration in Bonn, commissioned by Count Ferdinand von Waldstein. He was a friend of Beethoven and supported him wherever he could. It was he who wrote in Beethoven's family album before he left for Vienna that, if he worked diligently, he would receive "Mozart's spirit from Haydn's hands". As far as the Ritterballett is concerned, it should be noted that Waldstein probably not only supported Beethoven, but also benefited from him. For Waldstein was also an ambitious composer and at least did not object when the piece initially ran under his name for a few years. It is good that today various societies put a stop to such copyright infringements. In this concert, the audience can form its own opinion as to whether the Ritterballett could have been written by Waldstein – for we play Waldstein's stormy and fresh Symphony in D major as the main work of the evening. A memorable set!

Really classy

Redoute Bonn

The Beethoven Orchestra Bonn up close: for beginners and experienced players, for Beethoven fans and those who want to become one! It is always a special experience for us to be in contact with our audience in the Telekom headquarters and to be able to present the great works of classical music in word and sound. There are no fears of contact here and you don't have to be able to distinguish a double subdominant from a triple Rittberger! We dive deep into Beethoven's Symphony No. 2: this is the symphony with the hiccups. Will we and the audience be able to listen to the symphony's unbelievably cheeky finale in the same way as the Viennese did at the premiere? Beethoven was just 30 years old and by no means the old grump that posterity portrayed him as, but rather a dashing, fashionable young man from the Rhineland. With this concert, recorder player and conductor Dorothee Oberlinger introduces herself to our audience: Debut with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn with Beethoven!

Beethoven

When André Gatzke comes to the opera for the big children's carnival party, there will be singing, swaying and laughing. Carnival hits in orchestral arrangements and music through all styles and eras – everyone will get their money's worth at this concert. We are looking forward to the whirlwind André Gatzke, the young dancers from the Vadim Bondar Ballet Center and the Bönnsche Pänz and above all to many big and small carnival revellers in disguise in the orchestra … and the audience!

Bonn Alaaf!

What theater: The Malente family meets Dirk Kaftan and the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn. This means fun, mix-ups, wonderful costumes and great drama are pre-programmed! As every year, our carnival program offers a bouquet of colorful melodies: sometimes Rhenish, sometimes Viennese, sometimes from Venice, Rio de Janeiro or one of the other great carnival strongholds of the world. Orchestral, vocal and full-bodied numbers alternate – you can be curious!

What a drama!

The Russian fairy tale of the traveling musician is almost forgotten, yet the story seems familiar: A brave woman travels to a perilous kingdom to rescue her husband from captivity. It almost sounds like Ludwig van Beethoven's opera Fidelio . In the seat cushion concert with fairy-tale music from Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky's Children's Album , it is the power of music that brings loved ones together again in the end. A fairy tale hour for daring little heroes.

The Traveling Musician

Finally Koblenz again! We are delighted to be back at the Musik-Institut for the first time since 2019 and to be able to present the Koblenz audience with Sergei Nakariakov and Gábor Boldoczki, two real world stars! In addition: Richard Strauss'Also Sprach Zarathustra , the piece with the mighty opening fanfare that many moviegoers know from the film 2001 – A Space Odyssey . We will enjoy playing this fantastic work in Koblenz!

Guest Concert Koblenz

Rhein-Mosel-Halle

Even Friedrich Nietzsche was not sure how his great hymn Also Sprach Zarathustra should or would be classified. He perhaps thought it would be best to call the work a symphony. Richard Strauss took this suggestion literally and wrote a massive symphonic poem in four sections that defies all attempts at classification. When, in Stanley Kubrick's film 2001 – A Space Odyssey , a monkey strikes a bovine skeleton with a bone to the sounds of the opening fanfare of Strauss's Zarathustra , this is, on the one hand, self-empowerment: More can be achieved with tools than with the bare hand! On the other hand, however, one cannot get rid of the feeling that there is also rebellion and revolution going on. Bare violence that is directed against the existing, against the order that has prevailed up to now. So the talk about Zarathustra is about the questions of revolution and rebellion, of integration into existing systems and their critique: living meaningfully, despite and with the world and other people. How do we live, what are we guided by, what do we have to fight against? The actress and presenter Esther Schweins radically changed her lifestyle after a drastic experience – what is her position on the questions Nietzsche asked himself in his major philosophical work?

Zarathustra

In February 2022, Martin Grubinger brought the Opera House to a boil with Fazıl Say's Percussion-Concerto . The music of the ingenious Turkish composer Fazıl Say, which oscillated between all styles, immediately swept the audience away: One did not ask oneself whether this was new music, or music from distant lands – one was drawn into a vortex of sounds, rhythms, colors. Now Fazıl Say has written a trumpet concerto. He did not settle for one trumpet, however, but took on the challenge of writing a double concerto for two of the world's most virtuosic trumpeters: An instrumental summit meeting beyond compare! Sergei Nakariakov and Gábor Boldoczki join forces with our orchestra for a concerto that does not yet exist when this issue appears – the world premieres and first performances will have just died away when this new work by Fazıl Say comes to Bonn – exciting new territory, then ! Stanley Kubrick also broke new ground in his film 2001 – A Space Odyssey : at the beginning of the film, a horde of primitive humans can be seen in the savannah. A fight for survival for water, food, shelter! The decisive moment is the one in which one of the prehistoric men gets the idea to use an animal bone as a tool. And this enlightenment is accompanied by the beginning of Richard Strauss' tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra . Radiant brass, the low tone roll of the organ. Like an incantation, a prayer, a ceremonial act! No one who has heard this beginning will ever forget it again, even if he does not know from which piece of music it comes. The 30-minute tone poem based on texts by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was also new territory when it appeared. One didn't know what to do with it. How could one understand an orchestral piece whose parts were labeled: “Von den Hinterwäldlern” or: “Von der Wissenschaft”? It is definitely worth immersing yourself in this sensual music once one has been overwhelmed by the opening fanfare. Nine movements in four large sections, like a symphony, played by a late romantic large orchestra with abundant brass instruments and two harps.

Summit

The Yaron Quartet is one of the permanent chamber music formations of the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn. For years, the ensemble has been working on the extensive string quartet repertoire and keeps coming up with surprising discoveries and clever concert programs. This season, Franz Schubert's great string quartet Death and the Maiden is the core of the program: one of the milestones of literature that never leaves quartet and audience unchanged. The power of the four conceivably different movements, which go to the limits of what can be played, felt, thought, is too haunting. The Lithuanian contemporary composer Algirdas Martinaitis mirrors Schubert's work in his quartet with the same title Mirtis ir mergele – Death and the Maiden . He approaches its content, its emotional worlds, and at times breaks through barriers that separate two pieces of music. The questions of originality and individuality, of imitation and reflection, of depth and banality have been important themes for Martinaitis to confront us with in recent years. The Yaron Quartet separates the two works through Arvo Pärt's iconic composition Fratres , one of the early examples of his bell style. Endless repetitions, chord progressions similar to the ringing of entire chimes seem to establish a world between day and dream – a world where the passions, the consolation, the despair that speaks from Schubert's and Martinaitis' works can only be perceived from a distance.

Death and the Maiden

Do you know when you can't sleep? And the more you think about falling asleep, the more awake you become? No amount of counting sheep will help. Maybe the right music will help? You might think so with Mozart's Little Night Music . But it's definitely not music for sleeping, more for real night owls! Together we go on a nocturnal musical walk – and there's a lot going on! Will our eyes close at the end?

A Little Night Music

Why travel far, when good things are so close: We are happy and proud to have outstanding musicians in our orchestra and to be able to present them as soloists. Johanna Welsch is an experienced harpist who knows the repertoire inside out. The harp is a rather exotic instrument, the scene is small – and of course people know each other! When Xavier de Maistre was our guest in the fall of 2022, Johanna Welsch also sat in the audience to experience how the world star handled her absolute favorite concerto. Now she is looking forward to one of the most beautiful concerts in literature and, what's more, to playing it with a wonderful colleague. Our new principal flutist, Lucas Spagnolo, is in his second year with us, not 25 years old and a great musician! The Hofkapellen series is very close to Dirk Kaftan's heart. In this concert, a symphony by Beethoven's childhood friend Anton Reicha will be performed again, which will be reissued especially for us, plus an overture by Beethoven's strict teacher Neefe, from sheet music that has not seen the light of day since Ludwig's teenage years … So you can be curious!

Flute and Harp

Drama right at the start of the season? But yes: the stage is there so that in concert or in theater we can experience in our minds and hearts what we (hopefully) don't have to go through in life. And so sometimes the darkest plays are the ones we love the most! We begin the season with a program that takes us from the wild, late-Romantic stormy landscape of Dora Pejacevic's Overture to Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto and the thrilling soundscapes of Béla Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra.

Drama Concert

It has red, yellow and orange feathers. It can fly unbelievably fast and sing stunningly beautifully. And best of all, he has magical powers: The firebird . Juri Tetzlaff returns to the Bonn Opera House with an adventure story about Prince Ivan and the Firebird. Juri Tetzlaff is a television presenter – but in this family concert he will prove that you can also see with your ears. Sounds pretty crazy, but with the colorful and dazzling music from Igor Stravinsky's Firebird Suite , you really can!

The Firebird

At the 12th Opera Gala in Bonn, international stars from the world’s biggest stages perform together on a single evening. They will delight audiences with a varied musical program at the highest level – accompanied by the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the Bonn Theatre Opera Chorus. All the artists performing waive their fees for a good cause.

Opengala

Whips crack and bells tinkle, horses trot – we take you on a musical sleigh ride through a snowy winter wonderland with Leopold Mozart’s » Joke Symphony «. But where is the journey taking us? A palace appears on the horizon, where a costume ball is taking place…

Papa Mozarts Schlittenfahrt

Richard Wagner probably had the opposite in mind for Bayreuth to what we are presenting to our audience in the 5. Freitagskonzert: Namely an opera without a (visible) orchestra. We play his music, on stage: The Ring – a symphonic adventure! Henk de Vlieger has condensed the 15 hours of this major musical-theatrical event into a breathtaking 70 minutes. But let’s return to Bayreuth, where the orchestral musicians are »tucked away« underground, neither seen by the audience nor able to see anything of the hall or stage themselves: Perhaps this evening we can give you a little insight into the perspective of the Bayreuth orchestral musicians, many of whom say that Wagner close to the orchestra, without the » distracting« singers, is the greatest thing imaginable! The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Marvel’s fantastic film and comic universe are all related in one way or another to Wagner’s sex-and-crime story about gods, superheroes and a fateful ring. But Wagner’s musical theater work is much more: social revolutionary drama, utopian theater, biting social criticism! Above all: great, passionate, rousing music, from which many film music composers of our time have copied, and in which Wagner perfects one of his greatest inventions, the so-called leitmotif: Feelings, actions, characters, even things are given their own musical signet, a little theme or motif – a theme that we can sometimes trace from the beginning of the Ring to its end: for 15 hours, the leitmotifs fight and argue, love and quarrel, are lonely or in company. In our orchestral journey through the Ring, we experience its history as if in fast motion – but with the most important and best-known motifs, themes and pieces of music full of beauty! From the Ride of the Valkyries to the magic of fire, from Wotan’s farewell to Siegfried’s Rhine journey: » Hojotoho! Hojotoho! Heiaha! Heiaha! «

Der Ring

Power and greed, heroes and heroism, gender roles, the end of one era and the beginning of a new one: the themes of the Ring of the Nibelung are just as socially explosive today as they were 149 years ago at its premiere. After taking the complete adventure journey through Wagner’s tetralogy in Freitagskonzert, we focus on its grandiose conclusion, Götterdämmerung, in Im Spiegel. Bettina Böttinger and Antony Hermus not only immerse themselves in the more than life-size music of the work, but also ask about its relationship to our time: What do we sacrifice for power and prosperity? Who are our heroes? What is our understanding of the roles of men and women? Is there an unstoppable progress, or are we at the end of an era where something new must be born?

Twilight of the Gods

Ladies and gentlemen, we invite you to a serious concert at the Beethoven-Haus. Scientific and aesthetic … aesthetic … Aztec … whatever: questions of all kinds and music of all genres await you for your edification. Like the chameleon on the hood of a car, our musicians change color to give you a different kind of experience. Please dress appropriately. Your musicians of the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn PS: We recommend that those who are squeamish have some valerian tea in a thermos flask!

A musical fun

Koblenz is one of our regular guest venues and we are always delighted to be guests in a beautiful hall and with an enthusiastic audience. The backbone of the carefully curated symphony concert series in which we are allowed to participate are the concerts of the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie. The stage in Koblenz allows for large programs, so the Koblenz orchestra has had Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps on the program in the 2022/2023 concert season and Mahler’s 5th Symphony and Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Elijah in the past season. Following Also sprach Zarathustra in 2023/24, the BOB is now returning to the Rhein-Mosel-Halle with the Ride of the Valkyries through Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen.

In Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin sends his most famous character, his alter ego, on a great journey across the screen one last time: the Tramp. With a razor-sharp moustache, hopelessly out-of-position feet, big eyes and a big heart. As a guinea pig, a plaything of the powers that be in an industrialised, mechanised, dehumanised world. We see him at demonstrations, on roller skates, in various professions and, in one of the most iconic scenes in film history, in a factory of giant cogwheels. And we hear the Tramp – in his last film – for the first time. In 1936, the cinema public heard Charlie Chaplin’s voice for the first time, singing a wonderful nonsense song in a restaurant in this strange hybrid of silent and sound film. Modern Times is not only a profound search for happiness and a cinematic masterpiece, but also an acoustic treat. The score, composed by Chaplin himself, brings the film to life in our mind’s eye once we have seen it. And to make this happiness possible for as many people as possible, we are playing Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece at the Telekom Forum, conducted by Frank Strobel, one of the most important silent film specialists of our time.

Modern Times

There’s a lot going on in Vienna: devils are up to mischief, a fountain is bubbling with gold and a cockerel is laying eggs! What a load of rubbish, you think? Let’s take a stroll through this fantastic city with Viennese hits and see what else we come across.

Wiener Klatsch und Tratsch

For the first time, we are playing a work by Schumann in our popular Pur series. And we begin with his first symphony – a work not about spring, but about the longing for spring. The composer noted that he wrote the symphony at the end of the winter of 1841: » If I may say so, in that springtime urge that carries people away into old age and overtakes them anew every year. « What is this work, one of the first German symphonies after Beethoven, all about? It was written 14 years after the death of the »  titan «, who for decades led to a kind of » jam « for many composers who would have liked to write orchestral works. Spring could not have been composed in a more fulminant, yearning way than the 31-year-old Robert Schumann did in one of the happiest times of his chequered life …

Spring Symphony

 » Whether in the pub, the street or the hall, we celebrate the Bonn Carnival «,  » With Pappnaas or Höötche, we all sit in a Böötche «,  » Jeck jeht net weg « … These have been the mottos of the Bonn Carnival in recent years. Just like everyone else in Bonn, the Beethoven Orchestra turns up the heat at the height of the fifth season: In the carnival concert, our viola section sometimes performs as the wolf and the seven little goats or Snow White and the seven dwarfs, the GMD comes in overalls and the high politicians express themselves musically. But what if the motto of the session is  » colorful «? Highlighting the diversity and different histories of the Jeckinnen and Jecken? We got help from the inventor of the Muslim TÜV and father of Fathiland, Fatih Çevikkollu – together with Dirk Kaftan, he will guide you through our 2025 carnival concerts! There’s almost nothing that can’t happen in this colorful whirlwind … Alaaf!

Colorful carnival concert

Elephants stomp, fish bubble and lions roar. They come together to celebrate the craziest time of the year – carnival! They gather in the arena, confetti flies and we sway along! And one or two surprise guests have also been announced. Stay tuned and come along!

Animal Carnival

» Olé! « A veritable Spanish-fever gripped cultural life in Europe in the second half of the 19th century: Spanish architecture, fashion, art and music electrified artists and audiences alike. This began in music with Spanish-coloured compositions by Mikhail Glinka around 1845 and continued until Sergei Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto almost 100 years later. The Yaron-Quartet combines genuine Spanish music from the 18th and 20th centuries with Debussy’s grandiose string quartet in its chamber concert at the Alter Bundesrat. Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga was called ‘the » Spanish Mozart«, perhaps also because he died tragically at a similarly early age, and Joaquín Turina further developed the impressionistic style of writing developed by Claude Debussy and combined it with elements of folk music and the tonal language of the 20th century. In the course of his career, Claude Debussy composed a number of works with a Spanish flavour; in his string quartet, Spanish as well as Far Eastern elements and even influences from ancient sacred music can be felt. The tremendous energy emanating from this quartet certainly matches the burning sun over the Alhambra, the vast plains of La Mancha and the intense sweetness of Spanish oranges …

Spanisch

Quay Bonn-Bundeshaus

The roads in Central Europe were long and uncomfortable back in the 18th century. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s reports of stagecoach journeys, which he would have spent with his face contorted in pain and his bottom up in the air, bear vivid witness to this … Nevertheless, even in the time before Instagram & Co, music could not be stopped – it made its way from one musical metropolis to another, there was a lively exchange not only of sheet music, but also of musicians travelling from Vienna to Prague, from Augsburg to Milan, or from Bonn to Paris and back. The seat of the Churcöllnian prince and his Rhine metropolis were a centre of attraction for virtuosos from near and far. High-ranking musicians from different generations played together in the fantastic chapel and their employer’s library was one of the best in the entire empire. Naturally, such a modern court knew what was in vogue in London and Rome – as well as in Paris. The pre-revolutionary capital of France was also one of the musical capitals of the continent and there were important impulses in all directions. We play music associated with the city on the Seine, which was recognised and performed in Bonn. Fortunately, the electoral archives were anything but a Rhenish clique: every copy of music, every score and every part was recorded down to the last detail and every performance was documented. So, off to Paris: Allons-y!

Pariser Klänge

» A slender Greek maiden between two northern giants! « was Robert Schumann’s comment on Beethoven’s 4th Symphony. The Fourth: So is this one of the » little « symphonies, sandwiched between the Eroica and the » Symphony of Fate «? Well, yes: firstly, the Fourth is longer than the Fifth and secondly, the composer interrupted work on the Fifth in order to write the Fourth. It seemed more important to him at the time. And yet it is not important in any way. Hardly any other work by Beethoven displays so much sparkling, sometimes subtle humour with so much verve. There is so much to discover in this symphony, which begins like Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony almost 90 years later and whose conclusion sounds like the experimental laboratory of a mad professor in search of the perpetuum mobile.

Beethoven 4

A trip to the circus enchants, sparks the imagination and opens the way to distant cloud castles. And some of the artists whisk the audience away into a colourful and mysterious world with wondrous instruments. This is a story full of secrets, friendship, courage and lots of music!

The stage is set for magic and courage

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called death » man’s best friend « and had no idea that he would die before he could complete his last great work. His Requiem is one of a long series of musical works that capture the church’s rite of farewell in sound, accompanying it with tones, giving it a form that goes beyond the text and reinforces its ritual character. Rituals of farewell, rituals of new beginnings: an attempt to find support and thereby gain new perspectives, to make it possible to live on in the face of death and with death. We are trying to gain new perspectives on Mozart’s Requiem, whose performances have become part of concert rites. To this end, we will interrupt Mozart’s unfinished work at selected points and illuminate the essential questions behind the work in words and sound. Hardly any composer has found a wider range of expression between deep, personal despair and the brightest light for the ancient texts!

Requiem

Autumn is approaching and with it the time when the mice go in search of food for the cold months. But Frederick isn’t thinking about that at all! He prefers to collect colours, music and stories. Let’s find out together how they can help him through the winter and inspire his friends!

Frederick

Le mystère des voix bulgares: this was the name of a legendary record (or rather a series of records) that electrified music fans all over the world: rough, rubbing, flattering, incredibly rhythmic choral sounds that had never been heard before! Or had they? Béla Bartók, the great Hungarian folk music researcher, had already poured them into his string quartet in the 1930s, and Bulgarian ensembles and choirs had never stopped cultivating the country’s musical traditions. East and West, church sounds and fast-paced village bands meet here. The quartet around our violinist with Bulgarian roots, Maria Geißler, embarks on a virtuoso and sensuous search for traces.

Bulgarische Stimmen

When we hear the name Beethoven, huge symphonic clouds and fantastic piano virtuosity pile up in front of us. But we also find the latter in Beethoven’s stage works. For six months, selected school classes work with Beethoven’s overtures, which subtly hint at the events to come on stage. In the final concert, the pupils and the Beethoven Orchester Bonn show what they have created artistically with artists, music teachers and their teachers.

Beethoven in Scene

In a kind of mini-residency, we present saxophonist Asya Fateyeva, who will not only be our guest at BaseCamp on 17 May, but has also brought a colourful concert programme from the Baroque period with works based around the noble concept of hope to the Old Federal Council. But beware: » Hope, that’s a dangerous thing! «, as not only Lana del Rey sings, but as poets, writers and artists of all genres have been saying since ancient times! But that doesn’t stop composers from writing the most beautiful music on this subject. The unusual combination of saxophone with baroque harp and lute promises exciting sound journeys into the emotionally charged world of the baroque!

Hope is a dangerous thing

After Vivi Vassileva in 2023, this season we are once again putting a young instrumentalist at the center of the BaseCamp: Asya Fateyeva is a saxophonist born in Crimea who has been playing in the » premier league « since winning the German Music Competition in 2012. She won the ECHO Klassik in 2016. For this exceptional artist, there are no musical boundaries, just heaps of exciting music from all genres that she adapts. The focal point of our BaseCamp New Music is the fantastically beautiful saxophone concerto Saivo by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. She sees music as a force of nature that can change lives – and calls for us to rethink and change our relationship with nature. Like Sauli Zinovjev (see Freitagskonzert 3), she is interested in ancient rituals, especially those of the Sámi people of her Finnish homeland: for the Sámi, Saivo is a sacred place where dialogue is possible beyond the boundaries of this world. The I and the you, water and stone, fire and ash and a descent to the spirits of the ancestors – Saivo is a great spiritual journey, made for the vastness of space in BaseCamp!

Neue Musik

Light in all its colors is the focus of our spring symphony concert – in the month in which the trees glow in all shades of green: »In the beautiful month of May … «! Few symphonies are as radiant as Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s so-called Italian Symphony, in which he musically processes his journey to Italy, just as he did with his trip to Scotland. However, the Italian Symphony is not a program symphony, but rather takes up the moods and attitude to life of the country south of the Alps and transforms them into music: there is the cheerful verve of the opening movement, the Sicilian furor of the final tarantella and the pastoral smile of the scherzo. And as a contrast: the evocation of a Good Friday procession, the pacing, the memory of beloved dead people – with only occasional rays of sunlight breaking through the clouds. This distant light is the main component of Pēteris Vasks dreamlike violin concerto Distant Light, which he wrote for Gidon Kremer towards the end of the 20th century. The violinist Vadim Gluzman, who has already made a breathtaking recording of the concerto, will be our guest again. The concert opens with the playful Concerto for Strings by Polish composer Graz˙yna Bacewicz – just made for our virtuoso string players!

Lichter

A favorite of the gods, an early achiever: » Felix «, the lucky one? Branded as brilliant and superficial by musicologists. Reviled and ostracized by the National Socialists. A fate that Mendelssohn Bartholdy shares with many musicians of Jewish descent. What does this say about our society? What place does his music have in our lives today, and how can we rediscover it? Because if you embark on the Mendelssohn Bartholdy adventure: What fire, what passion – how were such misjudgments possible? Bettina Böttinger goes in search of clues with the conductor Ruth Reinhardt.

Italian

As in our Freitagskonzert 8, we are travelling to Vienna in the last chamber concert of the season, to a time of decadence, decay and overwrought nerves. But also to a time of awakening, of rewiring these nerves, which were treated by Doctor Freud and his colleagues. Intoxicating chamber music awaits us, centred around the shortest but best-known piece on the programme: the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th Symphony, immortalised by the Visconti-film Death in Venice. The piano really roars here, taking over the harp part from the original version … Alexander Zemlinsky’s Piano Trio is the oldest piece on the programme and looks back to the past, as it is strongly influenced by Johannes Brahms. Mahler’s symphony was composed around five years later and looks back and forward at the same time – a seemingly timeless work. And Korngold’s Suite from 1930? Written for the left hand of the war-wounded pianist Paul Wittgenstein (like works by Ravel, Prokofieff, Britten and many others), it is no longer the bold work of a child prodigy of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, but a grandiose homage to the splendour of music that has fallen out of time and hangs in no man’s land, between sparseness and opulence, optimism and pessimism, forward and backward-looking …

Vienna on the move

Naftule is a globetrotter and music lover! His king, ruler of the land of Sinfonia, sends him out into the world with his friend Pino to make friends with other countries. It’s a good thing that people in Sinfonia communicate through music – a language that is understood all over the world. Jump on the magic carpet and hear what people all over the world have to say musically!

Naftule and the Journey to Jerusalem

What about the musical family? I’m not talking about the Mozarts, the Bachs or the Kanneh-Masons. But rather the musicians with whom, without any help, a special bond is formed, with whom you are always happy to get together. For Dirk Kaftan, Tetiana Miyus and Alexandre Tharaud definitely belong to this circle of people. He has performed countless opera evenings with Tetiana Miyus in Graz, she was the soloist in a guest performance by the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra in Taiwan and she has also performed twice in Bonn, both times on a smaller scale. Now she sings the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s pastoral, heavenly, enigmatic 4th Symphony in G major as part of a Freitagskonzert at the end of the season. There is talk of saints and angels, of the little lamb and Herod. A great »as if«, so it is said of this symphony. Maurice Ravel was also a master of the »as i«. As a tribute to his 150th birthday, we are playing his groovy, humorous Piano Concerto in G major after the intoxicating Daphnis and Chloé in the second symphony concert. A request from Alexandre Tharaud after he performed Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand with the Beethoven Orchestra in 2018. G major: What a difference between the playful lightness and bite of Ravel’s concerto and Mahler’s symphony in the same key, smiling with tears (or crying with a smile) … Two masters of modernism with different views of the world. Incidentally, Lili Boulanger – unlike Maurice Ravel – was the first composer to win the coveted Prix de Rome, which was to pave the way for a great career for French composers. Unfortunately, she was already seriously ill at the time and died far too young. The inscription on Franz Schubert’s grave could also have been dedicated to her: » The art of music buried here a rich possession; but even more beautiful hopes. «

The Great Clarity

1900: The world flew apart! Psychoanalysis dissected the human soul, physics divided atoms, the churches visibly lost their importance. The belief in a God-created and God-ordained universe was reduced to rubble in numerous conflicts that flared up all over the world, but at the latest in the trenches of the First World War. One of the first to attempt to capture the world in musical form in all its collage-like, kaleidoscopic diversity was Gustav Mahler. His 4th Symphony, written in seemingly cheerful G major, tells of heaven and hell, promises us paradise and pulls the rug from under our feet. What is the balance between diversity and unity in our time? What do we believe in and what do we long for? Bettina Böttinger and Dirk Kaftan get to the bottom of these questions.

Himmel und Hölle

In the summer of 2025, the idea of telling musical stories from the Bonn of the young Ludwig van Beethoven with the Beethoven Orchestra is more than seven years old. In preparation for the Beethoven anniversary in 2020, we asked ourselves how we could best resurrect Beethoven in Bonn. The answer seemed as simple as it was obvious: by playing the music he grew up with. Music that he played as a pianist, organist and violist, that he listened to at home and at parties. The most modern and best music of his time: the Elector of the time owned scores of all the Haydn-symphonies that were available, including the symphony known today as La Poule (The Chicken) No. 83. Some of the orchestral musicians were outstanding composers, such as Andreas Romberg. And they must also have had outstanding instrumental qualities, considering the technical difficulties for the solo instrument that characterise Romberg’s violin concertos, for example. A panorama of Bonn’s musical history from the second half of the 18th century … and in some cases – such as Romberg’s violin concerto – even new in a way, as it has not actually been played for around 230 years.

Of Chickens and Farms

Big people are very strange, the little prince realises on his journey between the planets. He encounters a pilot who has crashed, a king who has no subjects or a scientist who doesn’t do his own research. And he realises that what is really important in life cannot be seen. Go on a dreamlike journey with the little prince!

The Little Prince

Summery and lively – just like every summer, we transform the wonderful Kunst!Rasen into the largest and most beautiful classical concert hall in Bonn. And our audience sits on chairs and picnic blankets with crackers and coffee, champagne and salmon and has a great time. As always, we offer a colorful mix of light classical music, film music and songs from pop, rock and jazz. And who knows, maybe Dirk Kaftan will invite the audience to dance along again…

Classic!Picnic

This will be the open air highlight of 2025! »Schicht am Schacht« is the motto when we meet our favorite cult Kölsch rockers in Hückelhoven again.

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Jan 17, 2025

Opengala

Jan 26, 2025

Papa Mozarts Schlittenfahrt

Feb 7, 2025

Der Ring

Feb 9, 2025

Twilight of the Gods

Feb 10, 2025

A musical fun

Dec 23, 2024

Hey Kolenda!

Dec 16, 2024

BeethovenNacht

Beethoven Orchester Bonn