Beethovenfest Bonn 2020
Beethovenfest Bonn 2020
No poet could resist the silvery glow of the earth’s satellite, still less any composer. It transforms the shape of our world. ‘Moonlight’ is a romantic theme par excellence. It was made to order for the new subjectivity of experience that emerged around the year 1800 and led, in the course of the 19th century, to ever-deeper probes of pleasure and pain in feeling and orchestral colour.
Beethoven stands at the point of transition. He was thoroughly familiar with the genre of nocturnes and serenades, of romances and Nachtmusik of the sort that found its most skilful practitioner in Mozart. We will devote an entire weekend to these charming ‘preliminary run-ups’ of light music. But Beethoven was already more interested in ‘expression of feeling’ than in physical depictions of Nature. His ‘Pastorale’ unleashes a thunderstorm, as it were, in his own heart. We will hear this seminal work of the 2019 season in various acoustical guises. Much the same applies to the C-sharp minor of the ‘Moonlight Sonata.
But the symphony after Beethoven also has its ‘Pastorale’. Gustav Mahler’s Seventh abounds in birdsong, horn calls and the strains of a mandolin. But now they are invoked as otherworldly visions. Visions also dominate Modest Mussorgsky’s ‘Night on Bald Mountain’, where witches hold sway and have the final word. In Schoenberg’s ‘Transfigured Night’, by contrast, a man and a woman gradually come together, poco a poco crescendo …
Moonlight also leaves room for strangeness, oddities and the bizarre. Aribert Reimann transforms Schumann and Brahms; Giselher Klebe entrusts the ‘Moonlight’ Sonata to a French horn; Enno Poppe ventures onto the Beethoven Violin Concerto; and Beethoven’s Mass in C is interspersed with works by Nono and Lachenmann. A ‘Pierrot’ gets up to his nocturnal tricks, while Brecht and Weill tell of Louisiana, ‘where the waters of the Mississippi flow beneath the moon …’
Great performers will also grace this year’s Beethovenfest. We juxtapose the sound of the modern orchestra alongside ‘original sound’, present world premières, offer theatre and dance, outreach and jazz, and, as always, lots of Beethoven.
My deep gratitude goes to all those donors, sponsors and foundations who made our festival possible – and of course to Beethovenfest aficionados everywhere!
Nike Wagner, Director
About the Beethovenfest Bonn
A festival in the city of Beethoven's birth. The heart of the Bonn Beethovenfest is the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Here performances by internationally acclaimed artists and ensembles give local, regional, nationwide and worldwide impetus to the preservation of his oeuvre. To the present day the festival has created dramatic interdisciplinary ties to Beethoven's past, present and future.
The Beethovenfest Bonn is one of the oldest and most important music festivals in Germany. Founded in 1845 by Franz Liszt in Beethoven's birthplace, it is now an internationally recognized cultural beacon with around 80 events in Bonn and the region every year in August and September.
Under its artistic director Steven Walter, the Beethovenfest is currently repositioning itself: as a festival that reaches out to all demographic groups, a festival that thinks radically contemporary and future-oriented to a living tradition, testing out the future of concert life in a variety of ways and playing a significant role in shaping it.
"All men become brothers" is the core message of the famous ode "To Joy" from Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The first festival under the artistic direction of Steven Walter is directed towards humanity’s diversity and wants to translate Beethoven's humanistic gesture into concrete programming: a festival of musical diversity; a coming together of the most diverse origins and identities in the common »home of music«; a celebration in which Beethoven's work meets the diverse world of the 21st century.
In addition to exceptional interpretations of Beethoven’s sonatas, string quartets and symphonies, special attention is placed on supporting contemporary music. Each year, the Beethovenfest commissions and premieres a number of pieces. Overall, the festival features more than 60 concerts at more than 25 venues each year. The stages include venues in the old town and, of course, the Beethovenhaus, the house where the composer was born, as well as castles and churches in the area.
Among the artists appearing regularly are the stars of the modern classical music scene. Many of them work exclusively for the Bonner Publikum programmes, which focus on the season’s theme.
