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18. December 2025

Midori (December 2025)

Violinist Midori will perform in January 2026 with cellist Antoine Lederlin and pianist Jonathan Biss in a series of chamber music evenings. The program features works by Franz Schubert, including Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat Major, D. 898, Piano Trio No. 2 in E-flat Major, D. 929, Notturno for Piano Trio in E-flat Major, D. 897, and Fantasy for Violin and Piano in C Major, D. 934.

For decades, Midori has been a defining figure in the classical music scene. In addition to her performances with international orchestras, she is committed to music education and cultural exchange.

17. December 2025

Kent Nagano (December 2025)

After concluding his time in Hamburg, Kent Nagano is now devoting himself to new and long-standing collaborators with these exciting projects.

On 14 December 2025, Nagano will conduct a concert with the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin at the Berlin Philharmonie, featuring works by Debussy (Ibéria) and Strauss (Don Quixote) as well as the world premiere of Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier’s Caída lenta for orchestra.
The new year begins with a concert in Frankfurt: on 22 and 23 January, Nagano will conduct the hr-Sinfonieorchester with Jan Vogler as soloist in Dutilleux’s cello concerto Tout un monde lointain and Schubert’s Symphony in C major.
In February, Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 with the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini in Parma and Modena is on the programme.
A special highlight will be the premiere of John Adams’ opera Nixon in China on 24 February 2026 at the Opéra de Paris. Valentina Carrasco’s production features a renowned ensemble, including Thomas Hampson and Renée Fleming.

4. December 2025

Omer Meir Wellber (December 2025)

Since 1 September 2025, Omer Meir Wellber has been shaping the Hamburg State Opera and the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra as its General Music Director with his unique combination of tradition and bold innovation. Before Wellber ends the year in Hamburg in December, he will conduct the Wiener Symphoniker at the Wiener Konzerthaus in December – on the programm, on 4 December (Prokofiev’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 and Elgar’s Symphony No. 1) and on 5 December (Prokofiev’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2) with Yuja Wang.

Only then to finish off the year 2025 in Hamburg with concerts in the Elbphilharmonie with Haydn and Glanert (= ZeitSpiel 4) and the New Year’s Eve concert at 11 a.m. on 31 December in the Elbphilharmonie.

1. December 2025

David Philip Hefti with the Stuttgart State Orchestra: Performances of Final(ment)e – Beziehungsweisen für zwei Trompeten und Orchester (December 2025)

On 7 and 8 December 2025, the Stuttgart State Orchestra will perform the work Final(ment)e – Beziehungsweisen für zwei Trompeten und Orchester by David Philip Hefti at the Liederhalle Stuttgart. The concert will be conducted by General Music Director Cornelius Meister.

The two soloists, Alexander Kirn and Lennard Czakaj – the principal trumpeters of the orchestra – will shape, together with the orchestra, a unique interplay of sound and spatial perception. Composed in 2021, this double concerto for trumpets explores themes of encounter, distance, and the search for connection. A continuous accelerando structures the work’s three parts, culminating in an emphatic finale. Through its spatial disposition of players, the piece deliberately embraces a certain degree of acoustic ambiguity – a key element of its dramaturgy and expressive force.

These performances promise an intense live experience in which music is not only heard, but also spatially felt – driven by the energy of the orchestra and the presence of the two soloists.

More information here

24. November 2025

Third philharmonic concert in Hamburg (November 2025)

“In the 3rd Philharmonic Concert, we encounter Gustav Mahler in the vocal interpretation by Annika Schlicht and Benjamin Appl. Ella Milch-Sheriff was inspired by some of his songs to create new compositions. “I have to find the right balance ,” she says of her work, “between my position as a 21st-century composer and the texts from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which come from a completely different era.”*** CHANGE NOTICE: The 3rd ZeitSpiel will be conducted by Keren Kagarlitsky, who is replacing Adam Fischer at short notice. Afterwards, the 3rd Philharmonic Concert will round off its song-like program—instead of the originally announced Concerto for Orchestra Sz 116 by Béla Bartók—with Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120.”

More information here.

6. October 2025

The new YouTube channel of the Richard Wagner Academy of the Dresden Music Festival (Oktober 2025)

The Richard Wagner Academy (RWA) of the Dresden Music Festival is pursuing its desire to continue the work of “The Wagner Cycles.” The ambitious goal of the project is the systematic reconstruction of Richard Wagner’s “Der Ring des Nibelungen” from the perspective and using the methods of historical performance practice. This field of work has given rise to workshops, publications, and much more, enabling the transfer of knowledge from musicology to practice. In the future, these offerings will also be made available to young musicians and the interested public.

Thematically sorted short videos and YouTube Shorts are intended to make the artistic and scientific processes even more visible – and to take all participants and interested parties on a journey with exclusive insights, rehearsal glimpses, concert impressions, and sound samples. Find the channel here.

3. October 2025

Kent Nagano conducts Wagner’s “Siegfried” as the third opera in “The Wagner Cycles” at the Lucerne Festival (September 2025)

On September 12, Kent Nagano presents Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried” together with the Dresden Festival Orchestra and Concerto Köln as part of “The Wagner Cycles” project.

What began in 2023 with a concert performance of “Rheingold,” continued in 2024 with “Die Walküre,” and now goes on with the development of “Siegfried,” can be considered a benchmark for Wagner interpretation. The Wagner Cycles project is dedicated to Richard Wagner’s monumental opera tetralogy in a unique combination of theoretical and practical approaches.

3. October 2025

Max Volbers at the Gewandhaus Leipzig (October 2025)

On October 4, 2025, Max Volbers performs at the Gewandhaus Leipzig together with the new Bach Collegium Musicum under the direction of Reinhard Goebel. Works by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Bieber, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Johann Friedrich Fasch will be performed in the Mendelssohn Hall that evening.

Max Volbers and Reinhard Goebel have already collaborated on numerous projects, such as the performance of the Brandenburg Concertos at the 2019 Verbier Festival.

3. October 2025

Midori wins Cremona Music Award and Casals Prize (September/ October 2025)

Midori received the Cremona Music Award on September 26, and on October 5 she will be honored with the Casals Prize during a concert with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in Kronberg.

The Cremona Musica Awards are being presented during the annual Cremona Musica Exhibitions and Festival to individuals and institutions from the music world who have achieved outstanding accomplishments in their field. The awards are divided into categories and include composition, performance, projects, and communication, among others.

The Casals Prize is intended to support and encourage artists to follow the example of Pablo Casals and thereby inspire future generations as role models.

3. October 2025

Festival “Drei Tage wach” – Omer Meir Wellber opens his first season as Hamburg’s General Music Director (September 2025)

From September 26 to 28, the Hamburg State Opera hosted the festival “Drei Tage wach,” with which Omer Meir Wellber as the new General Music Director and Tobias Kratzer as the new Artistic Director opened their first season.

The festival began on Friday with the Housewarming Concert, which covered all possible genres and eras.

On Saturday, under the motto “What opera can do,” Wellber and Kratzer’s first joint opera production followed—Robert Schumann’s opera “Das Paradies und die Peri” (Paradise and the Peri).

On the third day, “Generation Future,” the premiere of the children’s opera “Die Gänsemagd” (The Goose Girl) followed, as well as a presentation by the Hamburg Ballet.

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