Somewhere for the weekend: Dresden Music Festival

Beethoven's Leonore  at the 2017 Dresden Music Festival celebrates the re-opening of the Dresden Kulturpalast
Ivor Bolton, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Ann Kern, Dresden Festival Orchestra (photo Oliver Killig)

The 2019 Dresden Music Festival takes place from 16 May to 10 June 2019. Under the artistic direction of Jan Vogler the festival's theme is Visions and a particular area of celebration will be the centenary of the Bauhaus. 

The festival opens on 16 May 2019 at the Kulturpalast when Ivor Bolton conducts the Dresden Festival Orchestra in a programme in Weber, Schubert and Schumann including Schubert songs arranged for voice and orchestra with the Dresden-born bass René Pape. Another intriguing highlight is a new Cello Concerto written for Jan Vogler, which will he will be premiering with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru. Written not by one composer but by three, the concerto will unite the talents of Sven Helbig (Germany), Nico Muhly (USA) and Zhou Long (China). And in a different vein, the festival finale will be provided by legendary guitarist Eric Clapton.

Bauhaus celebrations include the Bavarian Junior Ballet from Munich and the Berlin Academy of the Arts in Gerhard Bohner’s new version of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet at the Dresden Theatre. Originally premiered in Stuttgartin 1922 with music by Paul Hindemith, the geometrically inspired ballet helped to spread the ethos of the Bauhaus. The Russian pianist Nikolai Tokarev will perform Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition accompanied by a video installation which reminds the audience of Kandinsky’s production at the Friedrich Theatre in Dessau in 1928 which Mussorgsky’s work inspired.

Further highlights include appearances of the Staatskapelle Berlin with Daniel Barenboim, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Sir Antonio Pappano, the Vienna Philharmonic with Tugan Sokhiev, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with their new chief conductor Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla. Igor Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress will be performed as part of Equilibrium Artists, a mentoring initiative for young singers created by soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan.

The 2019 festival, the 42nd, will be presenting 56 events at 22 performance venues, many venues historic in their own right.

Full details from the festival website, and read the coverage of past festivals on this blog.