Experience the enchanting world of Tchaikovsky's masterpieces in Odense! From the beloved holiday ballet 'The Nutcracker' to the emotionally stirring 'Romeo and Juliet Overture,' the Odense Symphony Orchestra has a spectacular lineup that promises to captivate audiences of all ages. Don't miss these five exquisite performances happening at the Odense Concert Hall, where classical music meets modern-day magic.

Odense Comes Alive with Tchaikovsky's Timeless Classics

Odense is set to resonate with the timeless brilliance of Ludwig van Beethoven through a series of captivating concerts. The Odense Symphony Orchestra is bringing together a rich selection of Beethoven's masterpieces, starting with the intimate Sunday Matinee featuring the Trio in B-flat major at Odeon on September 22, 2024. Prepare to be moved by Beethoven's iconic 9th Symphony with the Royal Opera Chorus at the Odense Concert Hall on November 28 and 29, 2024. The celebration continues with Beethoven's 6th Symphony on May 8, 2025, and concludes with the powerful Bleuse, Beethoven & Faust event, highlighted by his Violin Concerto, on September 11, 2025.

Beethoven Celebrations in Odense: Symphony Spectacles and Timeless Classics

Dive into the enigmatic world of Dmitri Shostakovich with a series of captivating performances in Odense. From the emotional depths of Symphony No. 10 to the demanding Violin Concerto No. 1, and the varied and expressive works of Eastern European composers, these events hosted by the Odense Symphony Orchestra are not to be missed. Join us at the Odense Concert Hall to witness these musical treasures.

Experience Shostakovich: A Series of Symphonic Masterpieces in Odense

Experience the enigmatic genius of Dmitri Shostakovich in a series of breathtaking concerts across Denmark. From Odense and Aarhus to Copenhagen, immerse yourself in the emotional and dramatic tales spun by one of the 20th century's greatest composers. From the poignant Symphony No. 10 in Odense to the intimate Piano Trio No. 2 in Aarhus, and the exhilarating Symphony No. 14 in Copenhagen, each event offers a unique glimpse into Shostakovich's multifaceted musical world.

Musical Mastery: Shostakovich Concerts in Odense, Aarhus, and Copenhagen

Get a very special concert experience and join the symphonic folk club when one of Denmark's most prominent Danish pop bands, Folkeklubben, make their way past Odense Koncerthus and get their hits and impressive back catalog packed into large symphonic events.

The Folk Club & Us

Odense Concert Hall

The world will hardly ever find the unambiguously correct answer to what was the underlying "meaning" of Shostakovich's music. Was there anyone at all? Was he making fun of Stalin or paying tribute to him? Was he an elitist "formalist" who should be shamed and criticized, or a loyal party soldier who did honor to the Soviet state? Or was he really just a privileged official who wrote his music as he pleased and tried to go under the party's radar? Shostakovich spent most of his career falling in and out of favor with the communist authorities. And when the 10th Symphony premiered in December 1953, just nine months after Stalin's death, the expected speculation arose as to whether the work can be considered a musical portrait of the late dictator. This thesis had its supporters - but we can also choose to be content with hearing the 10th as an intensely emotional and dramatic tale of universal, human conditions, emotions and conflicts, written by one of the 20th century's undisputed greatest artists.

Bruch & Shostakovitjs 10.

In the spirit of the poet, a pearl string of Danish singers accompanied by the Odense Symphony Orchestra embraces the great emotions, the power of life and the dissonances of existence when we open the HC Andersen Festival 2024.

Hc Andersen Festivals - A Mirror Of Life

Odeon

The summer holidays are just around the corner, but before the orchestra packs its bags and throws itself into the hammock, we are going on a real musical journey into the wide world. But where does the trip go?

A Musical Journey – With Others' Aggers

Look forward to summer, summer and sun when, together with Birthe Kjær and Jan Schou, we fill Den Fynske Landsby to the brim with high spirits, good music and songs you can certainly sing along to. On top of the success in the summer of 2023, we are ready to once again fill the beautiful amphitheater in Landsbyen with lots of audiences and wonderful melodies. The program will feature both Birthe Kjær's own fantastic songs and other wonderful Danish film and melody grand prix hits. Get a real sunshine concert when we paint Den Fynske Landsby red with two of Denmark's finest entertainers.

Golden Memories In The Green – Birthe Kjär & Us

After several years, when the common song has really made its popular comeback, it is quite natural to celebrate Carl Nielsen's birthday with song. Come and sing along to some of his beloved national treasures, hear the orchestra unfold in breathtaking symphonic movements, and join us on the journey back to Nielsen's Funen origins.

The Danish Song - Carl Nielsen's Birthday

It is always with a very special pleasure that we present music by Carl Nielsen in our beautiful concert hall's Carl Nielsen Hall. And from the first chord kicks in, and Symphony No. 1 begins in “proud and cheerful” fashion (Nielsen loved obscure, Italian tempo designations – this one is “allegro orgoglioso”), we hear a 27-year-old, up-and-coming composer who has already solid take on the symphonic genre. He had begun work on the work while in the early 1890s on a grant-funded study tour around Europe and had become familiar with the "great music controversy", which required a young composer to decide whether he wanted to be "classicist" (like Brahms) or "new German" (like Wagner). And he had chosen a completely third path – of which the first symphony is unmistakable proof. Here there is an abundance of Danish tonal language, Beethovenian rhythmic processing of themes, and the special "progressive tonality" - ending in a different key than we started in - which also became one of Nielsen's hallmarks. Audiences widened their eyes when an unknown member of the second violin group stood and bowed after the premiere in 1894 – but once they found out who the elusive violinist was, he had to return and receive applause no less than three times.

2024 NIELSEN’S 1st & MOZART’S CLARINET CONCERT

On top of a completely terrific and sold-out concert in September 2022, we are ready to once again merge Odense Symphony Orchestra and Odense Jazz Orchestra into one big mega-orchestra! Finally the trip went to the USA; this time we are going on musical sightseeing in Scandinavia. Grieg's music for the play Peer Gynt offers, among other things, on Morgenstemning and I Dovregubbens Hall, which are among the most famous pieces of classical music at all, and this evening you will have the opportunity to hear them both in the classical version and in a delicious jazzy version arranged by Duke Ellington.

Odense Jazz Orchestra & Os

In the world of classical music, people often talk about the Three Big Bs: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. At this concert, the focus is on three great S's from the 20th century: Schönberg, Strauss and Stravinsky. Three composers who all approached music and the modern century in completely different ways. Schönberg, who by the way turns 150 in 2024, invented a completely new tonal language, but remained a romantic at heart. Richard Strauss composed romantic timbres but expressed emotions like the expressive artists of the early 20th century, and Stravinsky throughout his career used the parts of music history that made his own music stand out more clearly. Schönberg's Five Orchestral Pieces are from 1909 and are filled to the brim with emotion. From the furiously ecstatic to the deeply beautiful, all in something that, more than 100 years later, is a modern tonal language. Strauss's oboe concerto is full of exuberance and narrative joy, and the tonal language is romantic – yet you constantly sense that the music is from the 20th century. The second part of the concert is with music by Igor Stravinsky; The wind symphony and the Suite from the ballet The Firebird. Sharp, swinging music for winds and sweeping poignant music for the whole orchestra, showing two sides of the famous Russian composer.

The Firebird & Blouse

JS Bach's six Brandenburg Concertos BWV 1046–1051 are dated 24 March 1721, but are believed to have been written earlier, during the years from 1717 when Bach served as music director and composer of secular music for the Calvinist, music-loving Prince Leopold in Köthen. The concertos were probably written as a quite direct job application to the gentleman to whom they are dedicated, namely Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg-Schwedt (hence the name of the Brandenburg Concertos), whom Bach knew from a trip to Berlin in 1718-19. Bach subtly reminded the margrave of "the humble talent for music that Heaven has granted me". However, due to a lack of qualified musicians, Christian Ludwig could not perform the concertos, and Bach's request unfortunately remained unanswered and the concertos were never performed during his lifetime.

Bach's Brandenburg Concerts

Musik til ballet, opera og teater – musik til scenen. Det er hvad der er på programmet ved denne koncert. Vores chefdirigent Pierre Bleuse står i front, når Suiter fra Bizets opera Carmen og de Fallas ballet Den Trekantede Hat blæser gennem koncertsalen – og oveni kommer to af Maurice Ravels mest fængende værker.

Bolero & Bleuse

There are Viennese classics from the top drawer on the program tonight, from the three giants who define this short but epoch-making period in music history: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. "Papa" Haydn's iconic "Timps Symphony" from 1792, which the English call the "Surprise" symphony (although no one is surprised by the sudden fortissimo chord in the 2nd movement anymore), belongs among the mature master's "London symphonies" . And the Timpani Symphony has so much more to it than the famous timpani: Here Haydn shows us such a rich measure of his characteristic whimsy and musical innovation that the symphony has now enchanted audiences for more than two centuries and achieved the status of a timeless and beloved work in the classical repertoire.

Beethoven & Elvira Madigan

Women's voices are in demand in the 3rd decade of the 21st century. More than ever. This also applies in the concert hall, and on March 8, on women's day of struggle, the Odense Symphony Orchestra will let women speak in many different ways - both in the music and in a subsequent panel debate on the topic.

Women's Voices

Get a heavenly choral experience when we perform Fauré's immortal Requiem together with music students from the Funen high schools and the Fyn Philharmonic Choir.

Fauré's Requiem

Erroll Flynn jumps, fences, shoots with a bow and arrow and speed-talks his way through the classic Warner Bros. film The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1938. He does this opposite Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy of Gisbourne and Olivia de Havilland as Lady Marian. Not an eye is dry. But the real protagonist of the film is Korngold's incomparable music, which also won an Oscar. Poignant, sweeping, eerie and romantic are the tones that play such a significant role in The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1938. It is the music from this film that opens the concert. And who is this unrivaled film composer who has written all the music for tonight's programme? Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a child prodigy. He wrote operas in his teenage years, had a piano sonata premiered by Arthur Schnabel himself when he was 12-13 years old, and Gustav Mahler, Giacomo Puccini and Richard Strauss hailed him as a genius. He fled to the United States under Nazism and promised that he would not compose music for the concert hall as long as Hitler was in power. During that period, he established his name as the film composer above them all. When World War II ended, the first major work he composed was a violin concerto. And in the same way that you can hear that Korngold makes use of his background in the concert hall when he composes film scores, he also makes use of his immortal film themes in this violin concerto. He actually does the same in his symphony from 1952, albeit a little more discreetly. Both the violin concerto and the symphony are romantic and full of emotion, like Korngold's film scores, but there is room for greater reflection, and the slow movements in both works have a poignant mixture of fervor and seriousness in contrast to the bravura of some of the faster movements. Both ends of the spectrum are familiar to our chief conductor Pierre Bleuse, and with him on stage is the young violinist Alexandra Conunova.

Corn Gold & Blouses

We are very proud to be able to present a concert in which the Berliner Philharmoniker's extremely well-played and charismatic horn group takes part; BOTH as soloists in Schumann's Concert piece for four horns  and side by side with our own well-playing and charismatic horn group in Bruckner's 7th Symphony.

Bruckner & Visit From Berlin

Who can put together the ultimate classical concert? The two music-savvy arch-rivals from Den Klassische Musikquiz, Mathias Hammer and Frederik Cilius, will once again compete for this – well helped along the way by OS. At the last concert in 2022, Frederik ran with a narrow victory after a nerve-wracking feud. Now Mathias has thrown down the gauntlet, fired the musical cannons into position and is ready for revenge! Who will take home the victory and glory this time? All tricks apply in the battle to win the audience's favor. Look forward to a veritable parade of classic hits, selected and presented by the two musical giants.

The Musical Duel Ii – The Final Showdown

Tonight's concert is framed by two of the most masterful and famous works ever to come out of Russia. Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony, nicknamed “Pathétique,” ​​was written in 1893, when Tchaikovsky returned home from a three-week concert tour in the United States, rich and world-famous, but also mournful, melancholic and weighed down by nerves, stress and performance anxiety. The symphony premiered just nine days before the composer's death and has therefore ever since been surrounded by speculation about what the music's connection to death is - and what Tchaikovsky actually died of (cholera is the most likely theory). The 6th is one of his most soul-shattering works with strong emotional resonance and a consistently dark and intense atmosphere – but also contrasted by great, lyrical romance in the first movement and dancing joy in the second movement's waltz in 5/4 time. It is not the work of a depressed composer who has reached the end of his life – depressed people don't write depressed symphonies, they don't write anything at all! - but Tchaikovsky turns the traditional, Beethovenian development - from struggle to victory - on its head and lets the music slowly die out and the harsh and painful aspects of life have the last word.

BLEUSE & RACHMANINOV'S 3rd PIANO CONCERT

Open, icy expanses, deep, dark forests and conflict. Welcome to a Nordic concert with the Odense Symphony Orchestra! This concert's program is composed of three masterpieces composed by three strong Nordic voices: Carl Nielsen from Denmark, Jean Sibelius from Finland and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir from Iceland. Sibelius' En Saga is a tone poem that does not have an actual story as its foundation, but describes a dark mood . The result is like a somewhat disturbing trip in a dark forest - with great and at the same time subtle music by the Finnish master. Archora by Anna Thorvaldsdottir is from 1922, and has almost immediately become a classic for orchestra. Like a glacier, the music rushes forward and along the way gives the audience a sense of infinity in space and time. As if everything that keeps us tied to the earth is cut away, leaving us floating in space. So does the beginning of Nielsen's 5th Symphony, but so much happens after the quietly swaying theme at the beginning that the ground connection is quickly found again. The 5th Symphony has a famous snare drum solo, where the percussionist in the score is almost asked to fight the rest of the orchestra, and even though the symphony was written against the background of war and conflict, there is, as always, indomitable energy and exuberant life with Carl Nielsen.

Ollikainen & Nielsen's 5.

The weather is slowly moving towards the dark and cold, so it's time to put on the teddy bear wellies and go on a musical adventure with music that sounds like wind, rain and autumn.

Teddy Bear Concert

Sunday Matinee

After 10 years with the Sønderjylland Symphony Orchestra, NM 2024 will now be held for the 11th time - and for the first time in collaboration with the Odense Symphony Orchestra.

Nordic Masterclass For Conductors

If you are a fan of the clarinet, this evening is absolutely unavoidable. Weber's early romantic, expressive clarinet quintet in B-flat major is distinguished by its beautiful and emotional clarinet melody, which soars high above the accompanying strings and creates a direct connection to the innermost core of the heart. The work demonstrates Weber's skill in utilizing the tonal versatility of the clarinet, from the warmly lyrical to the virtuosic and dancing. The lively dialogue between clarinet and strings provides a lively and classical chamber musical interaction. The quartet was written for Weber's friend, the clarinet virtuoso Heinrich Baermann, who as a touring musician needed chamber music 'showpieces' to play in the cities where an orchestra could not be assembled to accompany clarinet concerts. And as such, the string quartet here is a mini-solo concerto – fully as dramatic and full of tension and pathos as any orchestral work, and with all the 'showmanship' and melodic sweetness that Weber as an opera composer had no trouble inventing .

Pro Musica - Muczynski & Weber

The concert lasts approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes incl. break

Schubert & Mozart

Chief conductor Pierre Bluese conducts three very different works this evening, which together show three sides of the orchestra's sound and possibilities.

Blouses & Brahms

A heavy fog has settled over the streets of Odense. The streets are teeming with cloaked witches and wizards. The grand adventure awaits just around the corner! Join the Odense Symphony Orchestra on a perilous journey through some of the greatest musical highlights of film and TV series.

Fantasy Film Music

Puccini's masterpiece is a true classic and one of the world's most beloved operas. With its immortal melodies, Madama Butterfly tells the tragic story of an irresponsible and self-absorbed American lieutenant who falls in love with a Japanese geisha. However, he fails to live up to his marriage promise and leaves her - without knowing that she is pregnant.

Madama Butterfly - The Jutland Opera

I have been allowed to put together a concert with the most beautiful music there is. It will consist of everything from the most delicate, most simple to the most complex and magnificent moments from music history. Symphonic selections, trips out into the world and broad strokes across the eras that have shaped the music and the sound of the symphony orchestra.

Best Concert In The World - With Phillip Faber

There are ghosts and devils scattered over tonight's concert with a loose hand. The "Geistertrioen" is arguably among Beethoven's best-known piano trios and certainly not a work you should fool yourself into hearing performed in the concert hall. And what is it that is so ghostly about it? It is its long and strikingly instrumented second movement that creeps somberly under the skin and seems more like background music to a horror film than any other work by Beethoven. Speculation that the music originates from drafts of an opera based on Shakespeare's Macbeth is probably not correct. Rather, the nickname is about the fact that Beethoven's student Carl Czerny noticed that the music made him think of the ghost scene in another work by Shakespeare - namely Hamlet . And the extremely appropriate nickname has stuck since this dramatic and deeply emotional work saw the light of day in 1808.

Pro Musica - Caplet, Tartini & Beethoven

Again this year, we invite our audience to experience first performances from four centuries. It is a completely unique way of experiencing the music and its history, where each work can be heard as new, and where the Odense Symphony Orchestra shows the breadth of their musical reach. Impressive baroque overtures by Handel, a classical symphony by Mendelssohn – the lesser-known 1st Symphony – a cornucopia of orchestral sound by Richard Strauss from the 20th century and a premiere performance by the world-famous Danish composer Poul Ruders.

Händel, Mendelssohn & Ruders

Beethoven's 9th Symphony is larger than it is almost possible for a piece of music to be. The symphony has become a symbol; it is the EU anthem, it was played under the Brandenburg Gate at the fall of the Wall, it is the freedom, love and brotherhood of humanity. It is the music that continues to comfort us through the centuries. The symphony will be 200 years old in 2024, and here at OS we are celebrating the milestone together with the Royal Opera Chorus and our chief conductor Pierre Bleuse. The 9th Symphony is groundbreaking in many respects, it is long, and it includes choirs and soloists. This had never been experienced before. The first three movements are entirely for orchestra, and then when the soloists and the choir get up and start singing Friedrich Schiller's famous Ode to Joy, well, it's really hard not to get goosebumps, and not to love your neighbor a little bit more than before. "All men are reconciled".

Beethoven's 9th Symphony - With The Kgl. Opera Choir

Fimbul winter! First snow, then storm, then cold and finally darkness! Can Jonas and Sofie do anything to save the world from Ragnarok? They travel to the gods in Asgard, to Hel in the underworld, and later they also have to go to Udgard to try to find Loki. But will it succeed in saving Christmas? Get the answer to one of our popular Christmas concerts, where you will be enveloped in the fantastic music Martin Brygmann has written. Staged by 73 musicians, soloists and a choir of 350 children

Christmas In Valhal

The fire crackles merrily in the fireplace, and there are Christmas lights in the eyes. There is a smell of brown and burnt, and the Concert Hall is wrapped in the most beautiful Christmas tones - BUT the Christmas peace only really descends when, together with the always fantastic Julie Berthelsen and the equally wonderful Det Fynske Kammerkor, we fill the Carl Nielsen Hall with delicious and cozy arrangements of the best Danish and English Christmas songs and hymns, crooners and carols. Sit back and let US take care of this year's Christmas atmosphere - and maybe there won't also be a little surprise hidden somewhere in the concert?

Christmas Carols

Get ready for a real Christmas story for both children and adults when we present Tchaikovsky's beloved Nutcracker . The performance is based on the classic story, but takes it into our own digital age, where the advent of technology has turned the classic and new Christmas traditions upside down.

The Nutcracker

Start 2025 in unusually good company at OS, when we find the musical fireworks and provide the year's biggest New Year's party together with Søren Pilmark and Frederikke Kampmann, who are both ready to kick off the new year with style. It will be a musical fireworks display with exuberant Viennese waltz, musical hits and lots of good entertainment. Forget about the dreary January weather and put your New Year's resolution on hold when the music, confetti and champagne bubble over the concert hall.

New Year's Concerts

Melody, rhythm, sound – these are the three cornerstones of music. There are other parts of music, but just like with the three basic colours, these three building blocks are absolutely central. Some composers emphasize one over the others, but it is difficult to find a piece of music where they are not present (an example where only one part is completely dominant we play at the end of the year, namely Ligeti's Atmosphères)

BLEUSE & RAKHMANINOVS 2. Symphonies

Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet was composed for his wife, Clara, who was an excellent pianist and composer. Felix Mendelssohn played the piano part privately in one of the salons of the time, but it was Clara Schumann who publicly premiered the piano quintet in Leipzig in 1843; and that at a time when it was not appropriate for female musicians to perform in public. But Clara Schumann was an exception, and the artistic milieu a mixture of something conservative and progressive. A piano quintet in itself was progressive, because there were not many before Robert Schumann who had combined the piano with a string quartet. Actually, however, he probably got the idea from Mozart himself, when he had edited his own versions of his piano concertos into quintet format, so that they could be performed under more intimate circumstances.

Schumann's Piano Quintet

It is wartime in Europe and in the rest of the world. It cannot be avoided, and the war takes up a lot of our collective consciousness. It is historical, it is close, it is potential, smoldering and actual, it is physical and political. It is blunt and heartbreaking.

Voices Of War

Join the great musical centrifuge with this gut-wrenching concert. Never has it been more relevant to mock the urge of Russian intellectuals to express themselves despite changing oppressive regimes – an unfortunately recurring relevant theme. Shostakovich had to wait until after Stalin's death to have his daring and emotionally charged 1st Violin Concerto premiered - with a solo part so demanding that David Oistrach himself had to ask the composer for just an 8-measure break at the start of the 3rd movement because in it at least to be able to wipe the sweat from the forehead! It is a wild concert on all parameters – not least the 6-minute long solo cadenza is unique in the repertoire.

Shostakovich & Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony

Take your favorite stuffed animal or your favorite teddy bear in hand and come with us to the teddy bear concert.
Once again, we open the doors to our large musical playhouse and welcome children, adults and teddy bears of all shapes and sizes to our teddy bear journey with the Odense Symphony Orchestra. For the first Teddy bear concert of the year, the teddy bears will be sent on winter holiday with easy-to-listen music that suits the season.

Teddy Concert I

Films must be seen in the cinema, but their fantastic music MUST be enjoyed in the concert hall with a huge symphony orchestra that envelops you in cinematic surround sound. Close your eyes and let your favorite scenes run before your inner gaze, while our large orchestra provides the soundtrack for you.
For a classic movie night, only the best is good enough; and we've gone through the vast DVD collection to find some of the most enchanting, immersive, dramatic and recognizable background music from some of the world's best films and composers such as Hans Zimmer, John Williams, Jerry Goldschmidt and many more. And for that not to be enough, we have also teamed up with a large choir, which ensures that we can turn the sound and intensity all the way up to 11.

EPSG:4326

World's Best Film Music

Odeon, Odense

If you are curious about classical music, this concert is the perfect place to start, when the Odense Symphony Orchestra dazzles two of classical music's greatest hits in one and the same concert. Grieg's iconic piano concerto looms large in the little Norwegian's production as a mountain of good sound and good melodies that reflect his love for nature and longing for his homeland; it was written in Søllerød in flat Denmark, but oozes Norwegian expanses, granite and musical whey cheese, and the Nordic master melodik shows his full potential here already from the first, shattering A minor chord, which is known far outside the confines of classical music .

Griegs Piano Concert & Dvoráks 9th Symphony

Based on the popular TV series 'Sigurd and the Symphony Orchestra', we open the door to the fantastic universe of the orchestra. Together with all of Denmark's Sigurd, we focus sharply on the many diverse instruments, each of which can do something very special, and which together create the great symphonic sound, so that we are all blown back in our seats. We will of course also sing along to 'Symfo-én, Symfo-two, Symfo-tre', when the Odense Symphony Orchestra and a large children's choir with well-singing children from all over Funen dive headlong into the music together with the always exuberant Sigurd. Come and feel the joy of music bubbling from the 300 performers on stage in an experience that can be felt - and taken home with you.

Sigurd & Symphony Orchestra

Four Eastern European composers complement each other with works that are very different in both instrumentation and expression – from Prokofiev's quintet for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and double bass to Janáček's 1st string quartet, nicknamed Kreuzer after Tolstoy's novel, with reference to Beethoven's violin sonata. Where Janácek's programmatic work has a romantic expression, Prokofiev's is more modern; almost circus-like. Originally the latter was composed for a dance performance, but the music is said to have been too complicated for the dancers; fortunately the work has survived. Both of these works were composed in the early twenties – 1923 and 24 respectively.

Prokofiev, Shostakovitch & Janacek

If you're also a fan of musicals, you can start looking forward to it. Odense Theater and Odense Symphony Orchestra welcome you to A world of musicals, where you can settle in and enjoy hits from the biggest musicals written by the best composers.

A World Of Musicals

'Fête galante' means love feast and refers to the paintings that show the parties and excesses of the French nobility in the 18th century. In the popular Danish composer Poul Schierbeck's Fête galante, such a love fest gets out of control when Count René leads the young Suzon into the dark, and this has major consequences. Poul Schierbeck has written the melodies for some of the most popular Danish songs, including "I was born in Denmark", "Hør den lille stær" and "It's today a weather". The masterpiece Fête galante is his only opera.

Fête Galante

Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture is a work that, in a Tchaikovsky-sensitive way, both tells the lyrical part of Shakespeare's story about the two young lovers and evokes how much the two young people's families were at war with each other. The music is a solid masterpiece that constantly appears in popular culture, but can still give audiences chills and breathlessness.

Bleuse & Shostakovitjs 5

The connection between Niels W. Gade, who became one of the most significant, if not powerful, composers in Denmark in the 19th century, and the fine Mendelssohn family in Germany is important. It was Felix Mendelssohn who premiered Gade's first symphony in Leipzig; and then Gade also became part of the very fertile environment of the city there. Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel could not, as the time (and both father and brother) demanded, be a professional composer and musician – for her, music was simply "an extra piece of jewelery she could wear". But she both played and composed and was highly regarded; also by her brother, who for her 25th birthday composed Psalm 115 as a gift. Gade's probably best-loved work, Morgensang fra Elverskud, and the gift from her brother are respectively before and after her own cantata Lobgesang, which she composed a year after giving birth to her son, Sebastian. It is a work that has references to JS Bach, whose importance was enormous, and which the two Mendelssohn siblings

Mendelssohn, Gade & Kor72

Two of the most romantic artistic souls are on the program when the young Danish pianist Gustav Piekut again visits the Odense Symphony Orchestra. This time we will hear his nimble fingers in Chopin's romantic masterpiece, the endlessly sonorous 2nd Piano Concerto in an evening that also offers Schumann's brave 4th Symphony, which in many ways set new standards for the symphony as an art form, as well as a powerful overture of the unfairly forgotten Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz.

Chopin's 2nd Piano Concert

Works For Clarinet and Shakuhachi - made by the two participating musicians
Performers: Kiku Day, shakuhachi and singing bowls; Kenneth Larsen, clarinet and singing bowls.

Meditative Matinee

Vivaldi was called the red priest because he was red-haired and priestly. You couldn't necessarily see that with the hair, because wigs were state-of-the-art in his time - and the priest's wedding was so-so, as he never came across as such. Instead, he came to manage a home for lost children in Venice, where young girls received a musical education. A large part of the many concerts he composed; over 400 and for many different instruments, are composed for these young musicians.

Vivaldi: Shower With The Strings

Saint Hans Church Odense

Selv den, som guderne puster på – Mozart f.eks. – kan blive overanstrenget. Og når man er ved at etablere sig som fri kunstner i Wien og skal giftes og etablere familie med sin elskede, sopranen Constanze Weber, kan selv et geni som Mozart føle sig presset. Alt dette forklarer han i et brev til sin far således, at han nok kan forstå, at Mozart ikke har tid til, som Leopold ellers har bedt ham om, at komponere et værk til en velhavende og indflydelsesrig person, der skulle til at adles, og som var en god ven af familien Mozart. Hvor travlt han end har haft, kan Mozart dog ikke sige nej til sin far, og han komponerer et af de værker, der er gået over i musikhistorien; hans symfoni nr. 35, kaldet Haffnersymfonien, efter den familie værket skulle skrives til. Mozart var selv overrasket over, hvor vellykket musikken var endt med at blive, da han senere genså værket. Han kunne knap huske det, men arbejdede videre på det, så det blev til endnu en symfoni. Og i sidste ende fik han sopranen: de blev gift, og hans sans for sopraner udmøntede sig også i musik. Til denne koncert får du Mozart for alle pengene, med en skøn ouverture, en perlerække af hans mest berømte arier for netop solosopran og til sidst den flotte 35. symfoni.

Bleuse & Mozart

The violist Lawrence Power is visiting OS again, and he is the soloist in Grazyna Bacewicz's Viola Concerto. Bacewicz was one of the most significant Polish composers of the 20th century, and although she is not heard that often in Denmark, she was one of the main names at the Musikhøst festival here in Odense in the mid-1990s. The concerto is divided into three movements – two lively ones and a beautiful, dark middle movement. Here, the contrast to the joie de vivre comes in the slow tempo, which carries more obscure feelings with it.

Beethoven's 6th Symphony

Take a trip to a lavishly equipped musical zoo when two pianists together with solo instruments from all the orchestra's groups embark not only on Saint-Saëns' immortal Carnival of the Animals - with giant hits such as 'The Swan' and 'Aquarium' - but also with the forward-thinking French composer Guillaume Connesson's prehistoric version for the same chamber ensemble. There's bang for the buck when the musical Tyrannosaurus Rex stomps through the Pro Musica hall, flanked by flying lizards, water dinosaurs and worse. This concert, where we play with the concert form, is an obvious place to start if you are curious about chamber music but don't quite know where to embark - here are both notes and melodies that everyone knows, as well as fresh new ones sound with a rhythmic edge and broad appeal. A concert for music lovers of all ages.

Carnival Of The Animals

Carl Nielsen's 2nd symphony "The Four Temperaments" is a magnificent study of the human mind. Because even though the title suggests a simplistic division of the human psyche, Nielsen's work is precisely a three-dimensional exploration of being human itself, all our contradictions and inner battles exhibited in terrific musical form. To guide us through the many emotions, we have the young conducting students from the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music, and the concert also offers a soloist from the Southern Danish Conservatory of Music in Darius Milhaud's "Suite Anglaise".

The Four Temperaments

Take your favorite stuffed animal or your favorite teddy bear in hand and come with us to the teddy bear concert.
Summer is just around the corner, and teddy bears must be sent on holiday with classical music, buzzing with sun, summer and warmth.

Teddy Concert Ii

Step into Odense Sommerrevy's festive tent and take a musical journey through time through the enjoyable history of revue music. The revue as a genre has existed for more than 170 years, and we are looking forward to playing songs from the various periods of the revue with both evergreens and the soloists' own personal favourites, which are sure to make people smile. Among other things, you will hear songs from Poul Henningsen, who played a major role in renewing the genre in the 1930s, and whose lyrics we can still reflect on and find new depths in today. Three fantastic and revue-experienced soloists will take the stage with us. You will have the pleasure of seeing Kim Hammelsvang, Betty and Sibylle Glosted fill the tent with lots of song and entertainment. Many of the revue songs have been written for a large cast, and we are looking forward to filling the tent with great music and social satirical pearls of song.

Record Music Through Time

Meadow in Fruens Bøge

The biggest music for the little ones! Get up close to the great symphony orchestra and get a unique musical experience for the whole family when you run around the orchestra, dance, go on dream journeys and feel the magical powers of music.

Classic With A Flash

“This was not the work of a trained monkey. This was music that I had never heard before" says the fictional version of Antonio Salieri when he is allowed to experience Mozart's Gran Partita for the first time in Miloš Forman's famous film Amadeus. He describes the pulsating rhythm of the bass and bass horns that starts the 3rd movement, and then… suddenly… the oboe kicks in; crystal clear and gracefully elegant with a melody that floats over the other instruments before the clarinet smoothly takes over with its sweetness and warmth. The Gran Partita is a large and beloved piece of chamber music by Mozart with a total of 13 musicians, and the work is surrounded by many theories in relation to its genesis, its title and its cast. Together with the Royal Kapel's solo oboist, Henrik Goldschmidt, we open the work's fantastic seven movements for the audience and put into words Mozart's genius.

Mozart's Gran Partita

In 2025, Carl Nielsen will be 160 years old. And once again we are ready to celebrate him and pay tribute to his fantastic and popular music, which still resonates with audiences - both in Denmark and abroad. Outside the country's borders, it is primarily the symphonic version of Nielsen that has spread like rings in the water, where in Denmark it is especially his songs and melodies that have become a national treasure. And on his round birthday, it is i.a. the beautiful, famous melodies for his songs, which we will throw ourselves into. It will be intimate, moving and filled with a lot of fantastic music when we do a chamber music concert for Carl Nielsen's 160th birthday.

Carl Nielsen's Birthday

Look forward to a glorious summer concert on one of Odense's absolutely most beautiful stages, when we once again fill Den Fynske Landsby to the brim with high spirits, good music and songs you can definitely sing along to. On top of two successful concerts in 2023 and 2024, we look forward to welcoming you again this year for a concert under the open sky with lots of audiences and wonderful melodies.

In The Fynne Village – With Us

The Funen Village

The summer holidays are just around the corner, but before the orchestra packs its bags and throws itself into the hammock, we're going on a real musical journey. But where does the trip go this time?
There is a sea of ​​exciting and exotic travel destinations, and what is better than setting off in the company of the perfect travel companion who has the overview and perspective on the big world?

A MUSICAL JOURNEY – WITH POUL NYRUP Rasmussen

Poul Ruders and the Odense Symphony Orchestra have a special relationship. The orchestra knows and loves Ruders' works, which is why we are particularly looking forward to doing a concert performance of Poul Ruders' fairy tale opera The 13th Child based on one of the fairy tales in the Grimm Brothers' collections and with a libretto by Becky and David Starobin.

THE 13TH CHILD – opera in two acts

All music has been new once. All works have had a premiere; a day when the audience heard this very music for the first time. In tonight's concert, we try to give the feeling of what it was like to hear a completely new work in 1725, 1825, 1925 and 2025. In 1725, one of the world's best-known musical works was first performed, namely Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, and as a soloist at the concert here is Michala Petri, who plays the world-famous notes from Vivaldi's smash hit. Again, there is music by Mendelssohn on the program from 1825, and from 1925 there is a very significant Danish premiere: Carl Nielsen's 6th Symphony. Like the completely fresh work, the evening's premiere, a work by Ole Buck was written specifically for Michala Petri, who will be on stage again as a soloist. Dew-fresh works from four centuries. Danish music's answer to Wikipedia, Mathias Hammer, leads the audience through 300 years of music history and puts all music into perspective.

The History Of Music – With Mathias Hammer & Michala Petri

Several composers who lived in the Soviet era turned to a spiritually inspired music, in a kind of inner exile. There are several examples; the Latvian composer Pēteris Vasks is one of them. Throughout his work there is a special spiritual tone. Castillo Interior is from 2014, and he says that the title came to him when he was in a meditation house by the Baltic Sea – inspired by a saint far away, the Spanish Teresa of Avila, who in the 16th century wrote a book with the same title, where the soul is described as a castle created from a single diamond.

Shostakovitch & Tchaikovsky

Few works can make a symphony orchestra quiver with shared joy like Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra. The Hungarian national anthem struck a rare folk nerve with his virtuoso composition and, terminally ill with cancer, created an orchestral work of impressive vitality that has been high on the orchestral repertoire worldwide ever since its premiere in Boston in 1943. It is written virtuosically and soloistically for almost the entire orchestra, and everyone gets a rightful turn in the spotlight; even the tuba has a distinctive and extremely funny solo! The symphony orchestra sparkles and sparkles in a musical tour de force that offers both good melodies, humor, striking beauty and sublime orchestration in Bartók's probably most beloved work, which with its terrific final movement constantly sends pumping symphonic energy into the world and reminds us, that the casing of the body need not be a prison for the wild forces of thought and creativity.

Bleuse, Beethoven & Faust

The beautiful, dark red bassoons are given their rightful place at the front of the stage in this chamber concert, which features Dutch Kees Olthius's extremely welcoming study of the versatile-sounding deep woodwinds. Here is inventive and melodious play with rhythm and sound in a kind of double concerto for bassoon and contrabassoon with string quintet. It will be completely dark red on stage when four bassoons play an arrangement of Michel Corrette's Le Phenix – French baroque in new clothes. But the brightest of the woodwinds will also be involved when the flute as a soloist in Joan Towers' 'Rising' examines the tonal movement upwards in every imaginable way; how does music move up and what happens when you get all the way up there?

Brahms' 2nd Piano Trio

In connection with the World Exhibition in 1878, Cavaillé-Coll builds an organ in the Trocadéro Palace, close to where the Eiffel Tower was later built. This is where Widor himself premiered his 6th organ symphony: The 5-movement symphony, which we here in Odense present on the Carl Nielsen Hall's concert organ; built by Marcussen & Søn.
Charles Bizet was a child prodigy, but died early, already at the age of 36. Before that he had composed one of the world's greatest operas, Carmen, among many other things.

Bizet & Widor

Take your favorite stuffed animal or your favorite teddy bear in hand and come with us to the teddy bear concert.
Autumn is just around the corner, and teddy bears must be sent on holiday. The weather is slowly moving towards the dark and cold, so it's time to put on the teddy bear wellies and go on a musical adventure with music that sounds like wind, rain and autumn.

Teddy Concert Iii

Look forward to being immersed in the wildest and most fantastic universes when we play the iconic music from films such as Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings. You've heard the music before, but nothing beats a live concert with a big orchestra, big choir and a emcee who gives it his all. If you are a fan of fantasy, you know how big a role music plays in building and creating the atmosphere of a magical universe, and our musicians are ready to embark on a dangerous journey with you. So bring your friends and family along for a magical musical experience that gives you the kind of goosebumps on your arm – the feeling that only occurs when you listen to epic music. Emotions that our musicians are experts in unearthing. The concert is aimed at both children, young people and adults – it is the love of fantasy and magnificent music that binds you together.

Fantasy Concert

Join us on a musical space adventure like no other when the Odense Symphony Orchestra explores known and unknown galaxies in a giant program with the biggest draw. Gustav Holst's Planeterne is a symphonic masterpiece that requires considerable instrumental muscle to realize, and the 7 movements that encapsulate the essence of the planets in our solar system are here followed by Colin Matthews's addition: Pluto – despite the fact that we are now no longer allowed to call the one planet. Ligeti's Atmosphères is the sound of being stretched out in space with no possibility of coming back – and that's what Stanley Kubrick heard when he catapulted the piece to world fame as an invisible and eerie co-star in his ground-breaking film Space Travel in 2001.

The Planets & Star Wars

The last Pro Musica concert of the year offers three very different, but incredibly integrated works. Brahms had actually put the work of composing on the shelf and had retired, but after hearing a concert with Meininger Hofkapelle's solo clarinetist, Richard Mühlfeld, he found the sheet music again and wrote four works for the talented clarinetist, which we will play at tonight's concert first of the works, namely the sublime clarinet trio in A minor.

Brahms & Prokofiev

A frenetic chase full of humorous and crazy performances sends two actors and the entire Odense Symphony Orchestra criss-crossing the wild stories of music history to find the innermost meaning of music in a merciless battle against measuring tapes and calculators.
The Odense Symphony Orchestra is to be transformed into a water park! Out with oboes, trombones, first violins and other tinkletangle and in with water slides and wave machines. Now it is up to the orchestra to play for life and prove once and for all that music can enchant, surprise, shock and send the imagination on magical journeys.

The History Of Music – In Deep Water

Get a unique introduction to one of classical music's biggest disciplines: opera, when three of Denmark's funniest and sharpest music and cultural mediators go on a journey of discovery around great hits by composers such as Mozart, Verdi, Puccini, Bizet , Rossini and many more. There are no fingers crossed or fingers raised when composer Allan Gravgaard Madsen, satirist and former musician Frederik Cilius and actor and satirist Rasmus Bruun put into words their relationship with operas and pass on their great passion to the audience.

The Opera Travelers

What exactly does a conductor do? Why is it that the audience is not allowed to clap between movements, and what happens if you do? Who plays the most difficult instrument in the orchestra, and which symphony is really the best?

Ask About Everything – With Us

For most symphony orchestras, Richard Strauss's orchestral swan song, the Alpine Symphony, is an impossible dream with its requirement of more than 130 musicians on stage. But when we in the OS invite the colleagues from Copenhagen Phil to dance, we can spectacularly realize this musical cornucopia, which with its enormous symphonic powers includes wind machines, bells, a concert organ, no less than 12 horns, as well as a maximum cast in all seats: fasten your seat belts because this is going to be a WILD ride!

The Alps Symphony

It is the most beautiful month, but not for the king in the castle. His war against the neighboring country of Montania has ended with him having to pay his weight in gold - but since neither diets nor alchemists can produce miracles, the castle's elves must take action and use their elf bulbs if Christmas is to end happily.

Christmas At The Castle

Raise the Christmas mood to new heights at our big Christmas concert in Odense Koncerthus, when we traditionally fill the hall with Christmas decorations, coziness and the most loved Christmas songs, hymns and crooners. Are you the type of person who listens to carols already in October and has already decorated the house before your local supermarket has taken down the Halloween decorations? Or are you the type who only thinks about Christmas presents and roast duck after December 20? No matter how early or late you get into the Christmas spirit, the concert will give you a huge musical push in the right direction. In an often busy Christmas season, our Christmas concert can be a small respite that can bring together family, friends and colleagues. So sit back, give your brain a well-deserved break and let the sweet Christmas tones warm you in the cold season.