The audience is treated to some of Puccini's most beautiful and poignant music in this operatic classic about the young Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San – Butterfly, who marries the American marine lieutenant Pinkerton. Shortly after, he returns home, and for three years she waits longingly and patiently for him. Butterfly lives in his house with their son, whom Pinkerton doesn't know about

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Madame Butterfly

Aalborg Central Waterfront

Over the centuries, it has been one of the musicians' noblest tasks to play the party when something needs to be celebrated. Join Klezmerduo on a visual and evocative musical journey to Eastern Europe and the Balkans to find the party

The little ones listen to Klezmerduo

Meet the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra's musicians in smaller ensembles when they play works they have chosen themselves because they are close to their hearts.



This season we start a collaboration with our good neighbor on the waterfront in Aalborg, the Utzon Center, and move two of the concerts over there to the Obelske Auditorium. Tickets for these two concerts are sold from the Utzon Center.

Star horn player from Berlin - Stefan Dohr

Utzon Center

Few have conducted Carl Nielsen as much as our own honorary conductor Michael Schønwandt, and yet it is a new experience every time, because his interpretations are always exciting and far from predictable. The sixth symphony is rarely played, so a riveting experience awaits, where the composer's inner playboy really unfolds. The symphony was written by the mature Nielsen, but nevertheless leads the mind to the series of youth pictures in which Carl Nielsen twists his face and openly amuses himself with the photographer. The 6th Symphony is a charming and playful work that ranges from beautiful, singable melodies to the simple and naive to wild avant-garde.

Schønwandt & Nielsen

The music in Mozart's Requiem is endlessly beautiful and poignant, but the story behind the work's creation is shrouded in mystery. It is a commissioned work, but Mozart did not know the person who commissioned it. It was a count, Franz Walsseg-Stuppach, who, through his lawyer, bought works from the leading composers of the time and had them performed as his own. The Requiem – the death mass – was intended as a tribute to his late wife, but it also became a requiem for Mozart himself, as he died before he could complete his masterpiece.

Mozart's Requiem

During the autumn holidays, we transform the Classic Hall into a VR ring, where the whole family can simultaneously experience sitting in the middle of the orchestra when it plays the third movement of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. Put on the VR glasses and immerse yourself in a completely unique musical experience where you can move around the orchestra while it plays. No matter which instrument group you turn to, the sound follows.

Concert magic in 3D

In 1827, Berlioz saw an English theater troupe perform works by Shakespeare, and he fell head over heels in love with Harriet Smithson, who played both Juliet and Ophelia. Ears of love, he begins his Symphonie Fantastique, which shows Berlioz's brilliant instrumentation, but even more epoch-making is his method of creating a whole between the five movements. The theme of the chosen one runs like a common thread throughout the work, and Berlioz really challenges the orchestra in this revolutionary work. In 1830 Harriet experienced the work, and three years later she and Berlioz were married.

A journey of love with Weilerstein

Join us as Principal Conductor Joshua Weilerstein takes the audience through this masterpiece in a new episode of his podcast series.

Sticky Notes Podcast - Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique

Hugo the dog loves when the drums play wildly, and Tilde the Tiger likes beautiful melodies and group singing.

They - and the audience - get plenty of both when Kira Svit and Jonas Ervolder Bové invite you in for half an hour of beautiful songs and fun song games.

The little ones listen to songs and percussion

Three works, each filled with beautiful melodies in their own way. The concert opens with British Vaughan

Williams, who, if anyone, understood how to draw inspiration from the old music and create new works. So also in the evening's fantasy, which is melodious and poignantly beautiful.

Mozart & Beethoven

Take your symphony orchestra on a thrilling journey into a galaxy far, far away - where the music breaks the sound barrier as we pay tribute to some of the greatest space films in film history. The soundtrack to this kind of film is always grandly symphonic and supersonic. There are tones from both the light and the dark side when we play music from classics such as Blade Runner, Avatar, Star Trek, Space Shuttle 2001 and Interstellar, before it all culminates with music from the star adventure above them all: Star Wars.

Galaxy symphony

Fans of fantasy and role-playing games can look forward to a concert where the audience controls the action and helps the heroes on stage through a perilous adventure. The journey goes deep into the Moldur forest, where the kingdom's Prince (the violin) has been captured by the evil sorcerer. Fortunately, the Giant (the double bass), the Dwarf (the cello) and the Elf (the viola) are ready to save the Prince, even if it costs them their lives. Together with the orchestra, the audience embarks on a perilous journey to help the musical fraternity. Is there a way out of the maze?

The endless labyrinth

We spread cushions on the floor and are looking forward to welcoming the orchestra's youngest audience again – the 0-3 year olds. For a good half hour, a cello, a flute and a singer will take the children into the wonderful world of music, where there is room for play and presence. The atmosphere is relaxed, and there is no compulsion to sit still.

BabySymphony

Aftenens solist har været her før – bl.a. i 2012, hvor han spillede Ravels G-dur klaverkoncert – ”en oplevelse langt ud over det sædvanlige”…. ”med myriader af nuanceringer i det klanglige”, skrev Nordjyskes anmelder bagefter og tilføjede, at François-Frédéric Guy i ekstranummeret viste et ”overlegent teknisk overskud, som aldrig fik lov til at dominere eller styre det musikalske udtryk”.

Beethoven & Bruckner

Meet the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra's musicians in smaller ensembles when they play works they have chosen themselves because they are close to their hearts.



Throughout his all-too-short life, Mozart had great joy and fascination with the singing and musical qualities of the woodwinds. He composed a multitude of works which stage the qualities of the woodwinds in the most beautiful way, and at the same time you sense Mozart's great insight into the enormous development that took place with woodwinds in the period. The clarinet and basset horn were new instruments that immediately caught Mozart's attention.

Singing woodwinds

A requiem is a mass for the dead and with Latin texts, but Brahms, who was not a particularly devout Protestant, opted out of the Catholic requiem text in favor of a selection of German texts from Luther's Bible translation. The texts, which Brahms himself carefully selected, are intended for the living, for those who mourn need comfort and encouragement.

Brahms Requiem

4,000 kids can't be wrong. The excitement would never end when the orchestra and actor Jens Andersen introduced a lot of North Jutland schoolchildren to the life and music of the Danish composer Carl Nielsen in the autumn with whimsical stories and beautiful tones. Now everyone else also gets the opportunity when we invite young and old to join the orchestra and tour guide Jens Andersen into Carl Nielsen's wonderful world in this child-friendly storytelling concert.

Who is Carl?

Tradition and innovation go hand in hand when we dazzle for this year's family Christmas concerts. True to tradition, we guarantee the ultimate Christmas atmosphere, and of course there are lots of wonderful singing elves from school choirs in Aalborg Municipality. Last year we introduced talented singing soloists from Kulturskolen's MGK line, and it was so well received by the audience that we have no hesitation in doing it again.

Family Christmas concert

Calling all Harry Potter fans: find the cloak and wave the wand! This December we're dazzling for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows™ - Part 2 in Concert – the penultimate film in the Harry Potter™ series.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows™ - Part 2 in Concert

Since the Middle Ages, the Christian world has performed the story of Jesus' birth in some dramatized and musical form up until Christmas. One of the most well-known today is Bach's Christmas Oratorio, which he wrote in 1734 when he was 50 years old. 

Bach's Christmas Oratorio

Forget about Christmas stress for a while. Lean back in your seat, close your eyes and enjoy the music. We guarantee the ultimate Christmas atmosphere that almost makes you feel like you're sitting by the fireplace roasting chestnuts while listening to some of the best Christmas carols – from Twelve Days of Christmas to Dejlig er zørden.

Christmas with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra

Beautiful evergreens, wonderful Viennese waltzes and lovely melodies from well-known musicals are on the program when we dazzle for this year's festive New Year's concerts. Caspar Phillipson is the singing host who will connect the jokes, and the soloist this year is Lise Baastrup Nielsen. They are individually known from film, theater and TV, and most recently we have seen them both in DR's TV series Orkestret.

New Year's concerts

Dane Alva Holm was just 16 years old when she made her debut with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in Carl Nielsen's demanding violin concerto and won first prize in Sweden's prestigious music competition Polstjärnepriset. Since then, commissions and prizes have flowed in, and now she will perform in one of the violin repertoire's greatest concerts - Brahms' popular Violin Concerto

Brahms & Dvořák

Romanticism and jazz

Experience one of the great masters of the symphony, Gustav Mahler, together with an almost forgotten name from the past, Pavel Haas, when Joshua Weilerstein explores two of the great symphonies of the 20th century in this podcast.

Sticky Notes Podcast - Mahler & Haas

For the second time this season, chief conductor Joshua Weilerstein tackles one of Mahler's great symphonies – this time the 4th, which is considered the most accessible to listen to. Beautiful and immediate in its expression - and sonically breathtaking. Where the theme of his second symphony was the resurrection and the third the earthly life, the theme here is the heavenly life. Quietly we ascend to heaven, and it all culminates in the beautiful fourth movement, where an angel sings of paradise – here delivered by the excellent Swedish soprano Miah Persson.

Mahler's 4th with Weilerstein

Baby Symphony

Stefan Dohr, who is the solo horn player in the Berlin Philharmonic by day, is Artist-in-Residence at the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra this season, and he is the soloist in the Horn Concerto No. 2, which Strauss wrote late in his life. While many other composers at the time were preoccupied with new sources of musical inspiration, Strauss stuck to the beautiful, late romantic music. The horn has always featured heavily in his works. His father was a very famous – and infamous – horn player who was admired for his fantastic sound. In the manuscript, Strauss dedicated the concerto to his late father, but the dedication was not included in the publication.

Strauss & Brahms

Her er enorme havdyr, flyvende øgler, mammutter, dinosaurer og sabeltigre. Tag med tusinder af år tilbage i tiden til dengang, jordens landområder var ubeboelige. Oplev de første arter opstå og uddø – det er alles kamp mod alle, og kun de stærkeste overlever.

Life on Our Planet – in Concert

Can a cello sound happy? Can a violin laugh? Can a bass make you dance?

What is it that music can do that hits our emotions and moods so well?

The little ones listen to the magic of music

License To Kill, Goldfinger, Live and Let Die, Nobody Does It Better and No Time To Die. Now a pearl string of the well-known theme songs from the many fantastic James Bond films is brought together in one blast of a concert.

Sinne Eeg – Shaken not stirred

In the post-war Soviet Union, a number of cultural figures fell victim to massive censorship – first authors, and from 1948 it was the turn of composers. At the head of the censorship was Andrey Shjdanov, who was put in charge of the Soviet Union's cultural policy by Joseph Stalin. His purges in the field of music affected Prokofiev, Khatjaturyan and Shostakovich, among others. It is during this period that Shostakovich composes his violin concerto, but it is too dark and introverted for him to dare to have it performed, even though the music is also moving, enthralling and oozes emotional depth. The work did not have its world premiere until 1955 – after Stalin's death.

Tjajkovskij & Sjostakovitj

Meet the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra's musicians in smaller ensembles when they play works they have chosen themselves because they are close to their hearts

Just messing around

Recent seasons have offered great experiences with great cellists, and this season is no exception. There is a rehearsal with Maximilian Hornung, who in 2018 enchanted the audience when he was a soloist in Bruch's Kol Nidrei. Now he is the soloist in the cello concerto that Elgar composed in the aftermath of the First World War. At that time, his music was already slowly falling out of fashion among concert audiences. Unlike Elgar's earlier violin concerto, which is lyrical and passionate, the cello concerto is mostly pensive and elegiac. Many years later, the concerto was reborn when the 20-year-old cellist Jacqueline du Pré practically made it her signature piece in 1965.

Elgar & Dvořák

The star composer of film music, John Williams, has not only written some of the best music for the biggest films. He is also a master at manipulating our emotions, when his music makes us cry one moment and shudder in terror the next. But what can film music do? And is there a reason why the classical symphony orchestra has been the filmmakers' preferred instrument since the birth of the film?

The master of film music

Strauss was 84 and in the autumn of his life when he composed Vier Letzte Lieder – a song cycle for soprano and orchestra. The songs are about saying goodbye to life, but there is no dirge about Strauss's work – rather a clarity. The music is sparklingly beautiful, and together with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra this evening, the Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg, who since her employment at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin from 2013-15, has been in demand on opera and concert stages all over the world.

Strauss & Langgaard

The only 27-year-old Hjalte Ross is both a local city kid and a citizen of the world. The young person from Aalborg has already achieved significant recognition
abroad – he is praised in media such as Rolling Stone Magazine and The Guardian, and there are probably still more people who know his name outside Denmark's borders than here at home. But Danish music media have also praised his three albums Embody (2018), Waves of Haste (2020) and his latest intimate, self-produced Less (2023).

Hjalte Ross with symphony orchestra

Meet the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra's musicians in smaller ensembles when they play works they have chosen themselves because they are close to their hearts.

Lyrical notes with romantic poetry

We spread cushions on the floor and are looking forward to welcoming the orchestra's youngest audience again – the 0-3 year olds. For a good half hour, a cello, a flute and a singer will take the children into the wonderful world of music, where there is room for play and presence. The atmosphere is relaxed, and there is no compulsion to sit still

Warm, romantic melodies almost line up, and it all culminates in a magnificent final movement. Brahms' unique melodic abilities are not denied in this his 1st symphony, but he also had to spend more than 20 years composing it. As a young man, he is heralded as Beethoven's heir, and this hampers him so much that he is unable to write major symphonies for many years. When his 1st Symphony was finally premiered, the conductor Hans von Bülow stated that "it was like the premiere of Beethoven's 10th." – and that statement was not praise, but a subtle hint that the work was a copy of Beethoven's. Posterity, however, has no doubt that the symphony is unmistakably Brahms.

Mozart & Brahms

The story of the Mother of the Sea covers a recurring ritual among the Greenlandic Inuit: When the catch failed to materialize as a result of the people's overconsumption and greed, the settlement's angakok (shaman) had to travel down to the Mother of the Sea to comb her hair free of human dirt. Only in this way were the animals of prey released, after which the humans could survive.

Mother of the sea

The end of the season will be a tribute to the vibrant American musical life, and inspiration has been drawn from jazz, blues, bebop, rock'n'roll and the cabaret genre.



It begins with Duke Ellington's charming musical portrait of the New York district of Harlem. He takes listeners on a Sunday morning walk – in his own words: “We walk from 110th Street up 7th Avenue, north through the Spanish and West Indian Quarter towards the business district that is on 125th Street... You can hear a parade go by past, or a funeral, or you can recognize the music of those demanding civil rights.”

Weilerstein & The Seven Deadly Sins

Here you will be presented with upcoming highlights, you will hear the musicians tell what they are most looking forward to, and you will get stories about works and composers – both the well-known and the exciting new ones on the programme. And then of course the orchestra plays lots of musical treats for further inspiration.

Season presentation 2025-26

The girl Tone loves to make up stories and music, and to explore all the images that are inside the music. Now she plays conductor, which means that she will decide everything all the time – all games and all music must be exactly how she wants it. But how does a good conductor actually conduct? And how long can you decide everything before your friends turn their backs on you?

Play as I say

She has toured with Niels Hausgaard and on TV has gone astray with BS Christiansen. In 2001, together with Rollo & King, she won second place at the International Melodi Grand Prix. But it is primarily as an eminent singer and songwriter that we know this year's soloist.

Sankthans concert

The season opens with chief conductor Joshua Weilerstein on the podium and three works, all written by composers who, in their own way, have explored and found inspiration in many different musical genres.

Aalborg Symfoniorkester

Nov 23, 2024

Who is Carl?

Nov 30, 2024

Family Christmas concert

Dec 5, 2024

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows™ - Part 2 in Concert

Dec 12, 2024

Bach's Christmas Oratorio

Dec 19, 2024

Christmas with the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra

Nov 16, 2024

Madame Butterfly

Nov 9, 2024

The little ones listen to Klezmerduo

Aalborg Symfoniorkester