Hamburg International Music Festival

Programme highlights to close the season: in this edition of the five-week festival, the great Hamburg orchestras and star guests explore the theme of »End«

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg
Elbphilharmonie Hamburg © Thies Rätzke

Description

Ever since humans started thinking about space and time, we have been fascinated by the end – of our path, of life, of the world. Can we foresee it? How will it turn out? And what comes after? Practically all world religions, myths and metaphysical philosophies work their way through these questions without ever having penetrated the sphere of final certainties. As the most fleeting of all the arts, music may be particularly well suited to pondering about the end. Incidentally, every concert season also has an end. In Hamburg, however, it’s followed by »the condensed season after the season« (Die Welt), namely the Hamburg International Music Festival. As a grand season finale, it presents especially prestigious and theme-oriented concerts throughout the month of May, this time under the motto »End«.

Composers like Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss wrote particularly ecstatic last works. Hans Werner Henze, who is in the spotlight this season to mark his 100th birthday, was also known for the overarching spiritual dimension of his music. The opening concert with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and numerous guests approaches the subject from a Christian, theological point of view: in his opulently scored, Late Romantic oratorio »Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln« (The Book with Seven Seals), Franz Schmidt painted the Biblical apocalypse according to the Book of Revelation with an extra-wide brush. If that’s how the end sounds, it’s welcome.

The complete programme will be announced in November 2025.

Supported by the K.S. Fischer-Stiftung, Stiftung Elbphilharmonie and the Förderkreis Internationales Musikfest Hamburg

Events of the festival

  • Kühne Stiftung Logo
  • Julius Bär Logo