The new season program for the Hamburg State Opera and State Orchestra, with Omer Meir Wellber as General Music Director, has been released.
Omer Meir Wellber will be involved in various opera productions, including Don Giovanni, Die Walküre, The Nutcracker, Eugene Onegin, Carmen, and La Nozze de Figaro.
You can find the 26/27 season program here.
During the joint U.S. tour by Max Volbers, Concerto Köln, and Shunske Sato, concerts were played in Berkeley, San Diego, San Francisco, and at Carnegie Hall in New York. The concert at Carnegie Hall was broadcast live on the Carnegie Hall Live program, a collaboration between Carnegie Hall and WQXR, and can be listened to here.
Grand tour
Telemann Selections from Klingende Geographie
Mrs Philharmonica Sonata sesta in G Major (arr. for string orchestra)
J.S. Bach Violin Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1052R
Giuseppe Sammartini Recorder Concerto in F Major
Handel Concerto Grosso in F Major, Op. 6, No. 9
Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor for Two Violins, Strings, and Continuo, RV 522
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On April 3, April 6 and April 11, Omer Meir Wellber will conduct Wagner’s »Lohengrin« at the Hamburg State Opera.
about the work:
Peter Konwitschny’s epoch-making production sets Wagner’s opera in an oversized classroom from the Wilhelmine era. Konwitschny’s interpretation marks a pivotal moment in the new approaches to Wagner’s reception over the past decades, by addressing both historical and contemporary themes whilst presenting the plot in a gripping manner. Humorous, playful, yet incisive in its analysis of Wagner’s score, the production traces pre-fascist tendencies and the longing for a charismatic saviour figure. Yet the utopia of a better world remains unfulfilled. The signs point to war. Redemption fails to materialise. Drastic soundscapes take their course and turn an initial hope into its opposite – the classroom as a metaphor for the dialectic of the Enlightenment.
The Romantic Opera premiered on 28 August 1850 at the Grand Ducal Court Theatre in Weimar. The Hamburg production premiered on 18 January 1998.
Find more Information here.
On March 20, Kent Nagano will conduct the London Philharmonia in Mahler’s »Resurrection Symphony«.
In his own programme notes for the symphony’s premiere, Mahler describes the work’s rollercoaster of an emotional journey: the first movement represents a funeral. Then come movements depicting happy memories, followed by the fear that life may have no meaning at all. But reassurance comes from the soprano who sings “I come from God, and to God I shall return.” In the monumental finale, soloists and chorus affirm “O believe, you were not born for nothing!”
Nagano has chosen to preface Mahler’s deeply spiritual work with a chant by the medieval abbess and visionary Hildegard of Bingen. Composed around 750 years before Mahler’s symphony, it sings the same song of faith and redemption.
Artists
Kent Nagano – conductor
Jane Archibald – soprano
Christina Bock – mezzo-soprano
Philharmonia Orchestra
Philharmonia Chorus
Programme
HILDEGARD OF BINGEN O vis aeternitatis
MAHLER Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’
March brings a joint Japan tour by Midori and the Festival Strings Lucerne under the direction of Daniel Dodds, including a total of eight concerts in Tokyo, Takamatsu, and Osaka among other cities. Midori will perform Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64.
Concert Overview
March 13 | 6:30 PM
Takamatsu, Japan
Rexxam Hall (Kagawa Prefectural Hall)
March 14 | 2 PM
Matsumoto, Japan
Kissei Bunka Hall
March 25 | 3 PM
Nagoya, Japan
Aichi Prefectural Arts Theatre Concert Hall
March 17 | 7 PM
Takasaki, Japan
Takasaki Art Theater
March 18 | 7 PM
Tokyo, Japan
Suntory Hall
March 20 | 2 PM
Osaka, Japan
Symphony Hall
March 21 | 3 PM
Tokorozawa, Japan
Tokorozawa Muse
March 23 | 7 PM
Sapporo, Japan
Sapporo Concert Hall
In March, Max Volbers will embark on a US tour with Concerto Köln and Shunske Sato. Concerts will take place on March 13 in San Diego, March 14 in San Francisco, and March 15 in Berkeley, before Max Volbers celebrates his debut at Carnegie Hall on March 18 as a special highlight. Further information about this concert can be found here.
Grand tour
Telemann Selections from Klingende Geographie
Mrs Philharmonica Sonata sesta in G Major (arr. for string orchestra)
J.S. Bach Violin Concerto in D Minor, BWV 1052R
Giuseppe Sammartini Recorder Concerto in F Major
Handel Concerto Grosso in F Major, Op. 6, No. 9
Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor for Two Violins, Strings, and Continuo, RV 522
The concert at Carnegie Hall will be broadcast live on the Carnegie Hall Live program, a collaboration between Carnegie Hall and WQXR.
Midori, Festival Strings Lucerne under the direction of Daniel Dodds and pianist Özgür Aydin present an album of Schumann: Violin Concerto & Works for Violin and Piano by Clara and Robert Schumann, highlighting two deeply connected artistic voices. The Album marks Midori’s debut with PENTATONE.
At the centre is Robert Schumann’s Violin Concerto in D Minor, composed in 1853 but withheld from publication for more than eighty years after Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim questioned its place within his legacy. Long clouded by its troubled history and a problematic 1937 premiere, the concerto has only recently gained recognition as a powerful and distinctive late work, valued today for its emotional depth and expressive candour.
The programme also includes Robert Schumann’s 5 Pieces in Folk Style, Op. 102, and 3 Romances, Op. 94–lyrical miniatures from his remarkably productive year of 1849, alongside Clara Schumann’s 5 Romances, Op. 22, dedicated to Joachim and now fully restored to the repertoire after decades of neglect. Together, these works reveal an artistic world shaped by intimacy, sincerity, and clarity of expression, echoing Robert Schumann’s belief that the artist’s task is “to send light into the darkness of men’s hearts”.
Further Information can be found here.
In March, two new productions under the musical direction of Omer Meir Wellber will be staged at the Hamburg State Opera: On March 1, »Peter und der Wolf von St. Pauli« (Peter and the Wolf of St. Pauli) will premiere at Schmidts Tivoli. This will be followed on March 15 by »Die große Stille« (The Great Silence), a musical theater project that reinterprets Mozart’s music in a futuristic context.
Peter und der Wolf von St. Pauli (Peter and the Wolf of St. Pauli)
With Peter and the Wolf of St. Pauli, the Philharmonic State Orchestra and Schmidts Tivoli are jointly bringing one of the most spectacular criminal cases in the history of the Hanseatic city to the stage – the wolf here is the neighborhood killer Werner “Mucki” Pinzner, who terrorized Hamburg’s red-light district in the 1980s. General Music Director Omer Meir Wellber, journalist Axel Brüggemann and Martin Lingnau, composer and artistic director at Schmidt, reopen the case using original documents, witness statements, images and films, transforming it into a musical stage thriller set to Prokofiev’s world-famous music.
Peter and the Wolf of St. Pauli tells the adventurous story of the rise of a criminal in the changing, increasingly tough neighborhood, but also of the self-sacrificing, perhaps already sick love of his wife, who ultimately goes to her death with him, of a lawyer who smuggles a gun into the police headquarters for the murderer and of the naive and completely overtaxed police.
The performance marks the start of the Frack off! collaboration with the Schmidt theaters! Further dates will follow on March 2, 4, and 18.
Further Information can be found here.
Die große Stille (The Great Silence)
General Music Director Omer Meir Wellber and Director Christopher Rüping work together to give us the chance to experience Mozart’s music as if for the very first time. It’s a lofty ambition, for which they travel far away from planet Earth to a distant future. There, a small group of people maintain a last connection to the long-gone Earth thanks to Mozart. The music of the former star composer is their daily ritual, reminding them of what it means to be human and to remain so. Christopher Rüping creates a theatrical scenario in a distant world that seems very different from the one we live in today. What is a human being and how do they react when something unprecedented happens? It remains to be seen what humans are still capable of when nothing human surrounds them anymore. And then – at some point -it becomes quiet.
The production will be running until April.
Further Information can be found here.
On March 2, 2026, the new composition »Aus Licht gewoben – reflections for violin and cello« by David Philip Hefti will receive its world premiere at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. The work for violin and violoncello was written especially for the distinguished musicians Hellen Weiß (violin) and Gabriel Schwabe (cello), who will bring it to life for the first time on this occasion. Further information can be found here.
about the composition:
»Aus Licht gewoben« unfolds as a multi-layered dialogue between the two string instruments. Through finely nuanced timbres, shimmering textures, and densely interwoven motifs, a musical fabric emerges that is marked by both transparency and intensity. Light is not merely a metaphor here, but a compositional principle: radiant overtone spectra, fragile lines, and energetic condensations permeate the work, shaping an arc of tension and poetic depth.
The close artistic collaboration with Hellen Weiß and Gabriel Schwabe served as both the starting point and inspiration for the composition. Both musicians rank among the most distinguished interpreters of their generation and are renowned for interpretative precision, expressive depth, and tonal refinement—qualities that find a particularly vivid expression in »Aus Licht gewoben«.
With its premiere at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the work enters its first public resonance space in one of Europe’s leading concert halls. The performance marks another significant milestone in David Philip Hefti’s contemporary chamber music oeuvre.
Further information about the work can be found here. You can also find an article about the history of the work’s creation in »The Strad« magazine here.