Elbphilharmonie Summer

A colourful two-week summer programme in the Elbphilharmonie Grand Hall – classical music, jazz and silent film accompanied by live music

The parasols outside the ice cream parlours are open and the sunrays are dancing on the Elbphilharmonie’s façade. That can only mean one thing: it’s time for »Elbphilharmonie Summer« – the Grand Hall’s sunny and upbeat programme for August. A wonderfully diverse offering will be served up over the two weeks, forming a musical overture for the 2023/24 concert season. Getting things underway is the silent film »The Merry Widow«, a screen adaptation of Franz Lehár’s operetta »Die lustige Witwe«, to which Ensemble Resonanz performs a new soundtrack live. The legendary Ethiopian vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke and his band present funky music blending tradition and jazz, while the Flemish a-cappella vocal ensemble Graindelavoix sings a spectacularly interwoven twelve-voice Renaissance mass.

Great symphony orchestras will, of course, be appearing, among them two of Europe’s leading youth ensembles: the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and the European Union Youth Orchestra, which has been standing for the European idea since it was founded in 1976. At the end of August, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra is performing in the Elbphilharmonie for a second time – a unique ensemble that was formed in 2022, consisting of members of European and Ukrainian orchestras, among them numerous refugees from the concert and opera orchestras in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv and Odessa.

Events of the festival

Supporting Programme