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Further information on the 2025/26 season and all upcoming concerts and events can be found at pittsburghsymphony.org
A new world-class opera house is set to be built at Baakenhöft in HafenCity. The plan envisions an architecturally outstanding building that will provide the best possible conditions for the Hamburg State Opera while making this special location on the Elbe accessible to everyone. According to the agreement, the city will provide and develop the site, while the Kühne Foundation will finance the construction of the opera house. Once completed, ownership of the building will be transferred to the city, and the Hamburg State Opera will move into the new venue. The historic and listed opera building on Dammtorstraße will then be repurposed for other cultural uses.
The Hamburg State Opera has a history spanning centuries. The new opera house in HafenCity aims to continue this tradition, offering the State Opera, Hamburg Ballet, and the Philharmonic State Orchestra a new home of outstanding quality and international appeal. At the same time, the Baakenhöft area will be developed into an open space accessible to all.
At the initiative of arts patron Klaus-Michael Kühne, the Senate, the Hamburg State Opera, and the Kühne Foundation have been in close discussions for several months regarding the construction of a new opera house. The goal is to create an architecturally outstanding building that will benefit the entire city at this prime location. The Senate has selected Baakenhöft as the new site, with the intention of making it a welcoming space for all.
To plan and construct the opera house, the foundation has established a project company in which the city and the State Opera will hold minority stakes. Based on an initial theatrical planning phase, an architectural qualification process will first be conducted. After completion of the preliminary planning and cost estimation, the Kühne Foundation will make the final decision on whether to proceed with the opera house’s construction. The city is committed to providing and preparing the Baakenhöft site for the new building and will cover location-specific additional costs, such as foundation work and flood protection, capped at €147.5 million. Once completed and approved, the opera house will be donated to the city. The operation of the Hamburg State Opera will remain the responsibility of the city.
The listed opera house on Dammtorstraße will be preserved in any case and continue to be used for cultural purposes. If the new opera house is not built, the existing building will require extensive renovation and modernization to ensure that it can continue to host contemporary opera performances in the future.
Dr. Peter Tschentscher, First Mayor of Hamburg:
“Music and culture in Hamburg have always been closely linked to civic engagement and patronage. These foundations were laid 350 years ago with the establishment of the Hamburg State Opera, which is now one of the most popular and renowned opera houses in Germany. A world-class opera house on the Elbe will provide the State Opera, Hamburg Ballet, and Philharmonic State Orchestra with a new venue that offers the best conditions for artists. At the same time, a new opera house will enhance the Baakenhöft area with its prime waterfront location and open it up for all Hamburg residents. Together with the Kühne Foundation, we want to seize this opportunity to strengthen Hamburg’s cultural scene and its international reputation. I sincerely thank Klaus-Michael Kühne and his foundation for this extraordinary commitment.”
Dr. Carsten Brosda, Senator for Culture and Media:
“Opera has a long tradition in Hamburg and is one of the city’s cultural pillars. The Kühne Foundation’s donation presents a unique opportunity to create an outstanding new opera house that meets the highest international standards while also serving as a cultural space for all, thanks to its location and architecture. We want to seize this opportunity to further solidify Hamburg’s place on the international cultural map. This will be a place for exceptional art that welcomes everyone! We now have the chance to continue the tradition of the civic opera and write the next chapter in Hamburg’s operatic history. This also includes ensuring that the historic site on Dammtorstraße remains a cultural venue.”
Klaus-Michael Kühne, President of the Kühne Foundation Board of Trustees:
“Hamburg, as an open, international, and culturally leading city, would be incomplete without an opera house of the highest international standing. I am therefore delighted to be able to realize such an ambitious project together with the City of Hamburg. Through my Kühne Foundation, I want to create a special place in HafenCity for all Hamburg residents, where the Elbe and its harbor, the city, and its culture can be experienced in equal measure.”
Dr. Jörg Dräger, Managing Director of the Kühne Foundation Board of Trustees:
“Building a new opera house is an extremely ambitious project. After intensive negotiations with the city, we are excited to move forward. The new venue will not only be a place for tens of thousands of opera and ballet enthusiasts but also invite residents and visitors alike to enjoy a spacious waterfront park.”
The Hamburg Parliament still needs to approve the agreement between the city and the Kühne Foundation. The contract will be published shortly on the Transparency Portal. Further information is available at www.hamburg.de/oper.
Media Inquiries
Ministry of Culture and Media
Enno Isermann | Press Spokesperson
Phone: +49 40 42824 207
Email: enno.isermann@bkm.hamburg.de
Website: www.hamburg.de/bkm
Instagram: @bkm_hh
Kühne Foundation
Dominique Nadelhofer | Press Spokesperson
Phone: +41 79 128 03 27
Email: dominique.nadelhofer@kuehne-foundation.org
Website: www.kuehne-stiftung.org
(Translated with DeepL.com)
Violinist and UN Messenger of Peace Midori is known for her global humanitarian work: At the end of 2024, Midori‘s foundation work took her to Nepal, where she was guest with her organization ICEP (International Community Engagement Program) with three young musicians. 2025 begins for Midori in Europe in February with a tour of Spain with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande – after two send-off concerts in Geneva, the tour takes them to Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Las Palmas and Tenerife where Midori will present Sibelius’ Violin Concerto.
Further highlights in spring 2025 include duo recitals with pianist Özgür Aydin in North America in March, followed by Midori playing Detlev Glanert’s 2nd Violin Concerto To the Immortal Beloved in April, first in Nürnberg with the Staatsphilharmonie Nürnberg and then on a tour of Germany with the Bundesjugendorchester at Osterfestspiele Baden-Baden, Cologne, and Berlin, among others.
Further duo performances with Özgür Aydin in Rotterdam, Pamplona and Bilbao will follow later in the year in May, as well as a guest performance with the Deutsche Sinfonie-Orchester with Dvořák’s Violin Concerto in June at the Berlin Philharmonie.
The Grammy for ‘Best Engineered Album, Classical’ went to engineers Mark Donahue and John Newton for their recording of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony and Mason Bates’s Resurrexit, performed by Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Manfred Honeck (Reference Recordings, 2024). The Grammy Awards took place on February 3, 2025.
All of three premieres take place under the baton of Kent Nagano in his last season at the Hamburg State Opera: the premiere of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos in a production by Dmitri Tcherniakov, with whom Kent Nagano has already worked several times, and two commissions in May 2025: Unsuk Chin’s new opera The Dark Side of the Moon and Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier’s The Illusions of William Mallory.
In 2025, another highlight is the extensive project of Dresdner Musikfestspiele The Wagner Cycles, of which Kent Nagano is Artistic Director alongside Jan Vogler. After Richard Wagner’s Walküre in 2024, the next work of the opera tetralogy Siegfried will be performed historically informed and in concert performance in several international concert halls in 2025.
kentnagano.com
In fall 2024, Max Volbers released his new album “Foreign Masters” with harpsichordist Alexander von Heißen on Berlin Classics. Max Volbers appeared on ZDF TV morning show with his new album – you can watch his performance with von Heißen here. At the beginning of January 2025, the album was nominated for the German Record Critics’ Award in the Early Music category. In 2023, Max Volber’s debut CD “Whispers of Tradition” was awarded the OPUS KLASSIK 2023 in the category Young Artist of the Year.
“Foreign Masters is a kaleidoscope of music by composers who came to London from abroad or whose music was enthusiastically played there. Immigration back then gave rise to an incredibly diverse musical heritage. London was a cultural capital of Europe whose extraordinary musical life would have been unthinkable without the artists from abroad and their lively exchange,” says Max Volbers about “Foreign Masters”.
Volbers and von Heißen presented the program of the CD in December in the Essen Philharmonie and on New Year’s Day in Weikersheim. Max Volbers’ concert on Christmas Day with Concerto Köln at Cologne Philharmonie was also a big success. Other highlights in 2024 were Max Volbers’ concerts with Il Pomo d’Oro in Antwerp and La Chaux-de-Fonds. In February 2025, he will play a concert with the Hamburg Camerata at the Laeiszhalle in Hamburg and with the Kore Orchestra in Warsaw.
maxvolbers.de
From baroque to Instagram vlogs: Johann Sebastian Bach‘s suites for solo cello are not only a hit in classical concert halls. Jan Vogler‘s recording of the prélude of Bach’s first suite for cello in G major has been used over 360,000 times (status 13.01.2025) by users for their reels on Instagram – making it currently by far the most successful Bach recording on the social media channel.
The topics and types of content that are combined with Bach’s famous composition in the digital world are as diverse as the 360,000 Instagram channels themselves. Whether in Asia, Europe or America, there are virtually no limits to its creative use. Bach’s music prevails and works as background music for content about designer fashion, babies, vacation vlogs, tutorials or animals, proving how timeless his music still is today.
“Bach’s music is simple and complicated at the same time. It is so brilliantly composed that you get the impression that it clears your head and makes everything easy – so it gets you through your everyday life and conveys emotions, and yet it is incredibly ingeniously constructed. This combination is unique in the history of music,” says cellist Jan Vogler about the six cello suites by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The six cello suites are considered the supreme discipline for all cellists. Jan Vogler has spent his career intensively exploring the work and influence of Johann Sebastian Bach, recording and rediscovering the suites for SONY Classical in 2013 based on the manuscript by Bach’s wife Anna Magdalena and presenting them several times on the world’s major stages, including such prominent duo partners as US poet Amanda Gorman and Hollywood actor Bill Murray. In the Bach Year 2025, Jan Vogler will now bring all six suites to the stage in Germany and present them at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg (March 8) and the Philharmonie Berlin (April 26).
March 4, 2025 Schloss Elmau, 5 pm (Suite 1-3)
March 6, 2025 Schloss Elmau, 5 pm (Suite 4-6)
March 8, 2025 Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Großer Saal, 11 am (Suite 1-6)
April 26, 2025 Philharmonie Berlin, Kammermusiksaal, 7 pm (Suite 1-6)
For a higher resolution of the image material, please contact office@pr2classic.de.
At the end of 2024, Mari Kodama released a nuanced Bruckner portrait with rarely recorded piano works on Pentatone which has received a great amount of international attention (Mari Kodama’s discography).
Mari Kodama‘s season 2024/25 included an opening concert with Le Cercle de l’Harmonie in Paris (Jérémie Rhorer) with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 on the fortepiano as well as concerts with the Würth Philharmonic Orchestra (with Veronika Eberle and Jan Vogler under the direction of Kent Nagano) and the Filarmonica de Stat Transilvania (Larry Forster). Mari Kodama also gave a duo recital with Julian Prégardien and in June 2025 she will return to the Konzerthaus Blaibach to continue her series with all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and new works by Rodolphe Bruneau-Boulmier.
marikodama.com
A highlight of cellist and intendant of the Dresdener Musikfestspiele Jan Vogler in 2024 was a special concert he presented with US poet Amanda Gorman. Together they created a concert evening with Bach’s cello suites matching Gorman’s poetry which was presented in 2024 at Carnegie Hall in New York City and later that year on Stephen Colbert’s Late Night Show. The label Capriccio also released Miloslav Kabeláč’s complete chamber music oeuvre on CD for the first time, with the participation of Jan Vogler.
In January 2025, Jan Vogler will be a guest at the Classicameri Festival in Eilat, Israel, of which Omer Meir Wellber is Artistic Director. Following his focus on Bach in 2024, Jan Vogler will present two special solo concerts in March and April 2025 in Germany: on March 8 at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and on April 26 at the Berlin Philharmonie, Jan Vogler will play all six of Bach’s cello suites. Performances with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Philharmonic Brass and the Stuttgart Philharmonic Orchestra will follow in May.
Omer Meir Wellber concludes his time as music director at the Teatro Massio in Palermo with the New Year’s Concert. However, he will return to the house as a guest conductor in April and May to conduct a new production of Strauss’ Salome.
On January 25, 2025, a new production of the KaiserRequiem will premiere at the Vienna Volksoper, his own creation of Mozart’s Requiem and Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, with the Vienna State Ballet (choreography and direction Andreas Heise). In 2024, Omer Meir Wellber conducted a very special world premiere at the Volksoper: the new opera by composer Ella Milch-Sheriff ALMA which was a big success. In May, the KaiserRequiem will be presented in a semi-staged performance at the Philharmonie de Paris under the direction of Omer Meir Wellber with the Orchestre de Paris.
The spring will take Omer Meir Wellber first to London to the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and then to Leipzig to the Gewandhaus Orchestra. From September 2025, he will begin his first season as General Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Hamburg State Opera and Hamburg General Music Director of the Philharmonic State Orchestra.
omermeirwellber.com