Deutsche Welle Festival Concerts

Series produced by DW - Deutsche Welle

Caption: DWFC host Cristina Burack, Credit: (c) Ayse Tasci/DW
Image by: (c) Ayse Tasci/DW 
DWFC host Cristina Burack 

Deutsche Welle Festival Concerts

DW: SERIES with live recordings of world-class performances from Germany.

The new season, which starts in October 2023, presents concerts from renowned German classical music festivals.

Broadcast rights allow PRX subscriber stations to use any or all of the programs in the series that have been already been published, or subscribe to the series to receive the files automatically each week.

DW Radio and PRX will release a new season of Deutsche Welle Festival Concerts – classical music made in Germany – in October 2023. Our host, Cristina Burack, will take you through the country's best classical music festivals for exciting, moving and diverse performances, with music ranging from the Baroque to the 21st century. The season's 13 episodes will visit such major musical events as the Bach Festival, Beethoven Festival, Mozart Festival and Bayreuth Festival. In addition, you'll hear directly from musicians, conductors and festival directors as they share exclusive behind-the-scenes insight into the pieces and performances.
The episodes will be released from October 2023 to December 2023. Each one lasts one hour and 58 minutes. The series offers ideal flexibility, as you can broadcast the entire season, creating a regular listening experience, or use episodes individually as needed.
In 2023, the city of Leipzig celebrated "300 years of Bach in Leipzig." In 1723, the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach came to the Saxon city to take up the position of Thomaskantor, or music director, which he held until his death in 1750. He wrote many beautiful cantatas during his first year in the position. Today, the pieces are sung by choirs all over the world. These cantatas were the central attraction at the 2023 Bach Festival. In this season of DW Festival Concerts, we present the festival's opening concert, which features the St. Thomas Boys choir performing some of these beloved first-year cantatas. The selection includes favorites of renowned early music conductors Ton Koopman and Philippe Herreweghe.
We also bring you a French evening from the Rheingau Festival that includes works by Hector Berlioz, while the concert from the Mozart Festival in Würzburg is all about the Mozart and his idols, including Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach. The Bayreuth Festival episode delivers highlights from a new production of "Parsifal," Richard Wagner's last opera. Listeners will be treated to the unique sound of the Bayreuth Festival Theater, which was designed by Wagner himself.
The chamber music festival "Spannungen" ("Tensions"), in Heimbach, offers up intimate and moving music from Mozart to Ravel as part of a tribute to the festival's late founder.
Our season also includes multiple concerts from the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, the composer's birthplace. Conductor Paavo Järvi opens the multiweek event leading the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich in Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World") and his Cello Concerto op. 104, with the passionate Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina as the soloist. Also on the program is Arthur Honegger's "Pacific 231." Another exiting episode features famous mandolin player Avi Avital and the New York string quartet Brooklyn Rider playing a selection of chamber music spanning some 300 years!
As long as the broadcasting rights remain available, you can also air programs from our 2022 season. These include a Mozart Festival concert featuring the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and pianist Seong-Jin Cho performing Mozart's Piano Concerto in A Major. Or there's the concert from the 2022 Bach Festival that illuminated the similarities and differences between JS Bach's music and that of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who was widely popular in his time, even more so than his father! The new organist of the famous St. Thomas Church, Johannes Lang, also presented a delightfully varied selection of preludes, fugues and partitas by JS Bach and numerous other relatives. Episodes presenting Bach's St. John Passion and St. Mathew Passion are additionally available.
At the 2022 Beethoven Festival, the Budapest Festival Orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica") under the direction of Iván Fischer. German-American violinist Augustin Hadelich gave an expressive and emotional performance of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, while soprano Anna Prohaska delighted audiences with arias from Mozart's opera "The Marriage of Figaro."
Stations may subscribe to the full series via PRX SubAuto or download individual episodes.
The full list of all 13 episodes for the new season is available now.
Hide full description

DW Radio and PRX will release a new season of Deutsche Welle Festival Concerts – classical music made in Germany – in October 2023. Our host, Cristina Burack, will take you through the country's best classical music festivals for exciting, moving and diverse performances, with music ranging from the Baroque to the 21st century. The season's 13 episodes will visit such major musical events as the Bach Festival, Beethoven Festival, Mozart Festival and Bayreuth Festival. In addition, you'll hear directly from musicians, conductors and festival directors as they share exclusive behind-the-scenes insight into the pieces and performances.The episodes will be released from October 2023 to December 2023. Each one lasts one hour and 58 minutes. The series offers ideal flexibility, as you can... Show full description


Additional Files

55 Pieces

Order by: Newest First | Oldest First
Caption: Avi Avital
The lineup this time is a who's who of who's in demand in any season: mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital, percussionist Martin Grubinger, harpist Xavier ...

  • Added: Nov 26, 2020
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Paavo Järvi
Mainstays at Germany's biggest music festival are the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and its principal conductor Paavo Järvi, who have had Beethoven i...

  • Added: Nov 26, 2020
  • Length: 01:57:57
Caption: Musica Ficta
Carl Nielsen wrote symphonies, concertos, chamber music, sacred music, two operas and – over three hundred songs, of which you'll hear several in t...

  • Added: Nov 26, 2020
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Nordic String Quartet
This time we're taking you on a musical excursion to early 20th century Scandinavia: two early pieces by Nielsen, Intimate Voices and Intimate Mini...

  • Added: Jan 20, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:57
Caption: Borodin Quartet
Most of the time, we reach out across Germany to bring you the best of the concert season, but sometimes it's good to take a look at what you've al...

  • Added: Jan 27, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:57
Caption: Lars Vogt
The magical sound of Sharon Kam's clarinet. Violinist Christian Tetzlaff and a piece he's been working on for forty years and still finds astonishi...

  • Added: Feb 03, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:57
Caption: Robin Ticciati
"A true British gentleman with a heart, an unambiguous stance and much passion for music" is how the German press describes Robin Ticciati, the 38-...

  • Added: Feb 10, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:56
Caption: Teodor Currentzis
The charismatic Greek-Russian conductor Teodor Currentzis is a sure-bet for exciting concert programs, also with the Southwest German Radio Symphon...

  • Added: Feb 16, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:57
Caption: Academy of Early Music Berlin
Méhul, Holzbauer, Cherubini and Knecht were among the composers whom Ludwig van Beethoven esteemed – and emulated. The parallels between their wor...

  • Added: Feb 24, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Statue at the house in Bonn where Ludwig van Beethoven was born
"In Mysterious Company" is the name of a concert by the Belcea Quartet from England. At the Schwetzingen Festival, they played two of Beethoven's l...

  • Added: Mar 03, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Sabine Meyer
The Quatour ebene, one of the world's most renowned string quartets, had to abort its plans to take all of Beethoven's quartets on world tour, but ...

  • Added: Mar 10, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Academy of Early Music Berlin
What is a hero?  Some monumental, untouchable figure? Or maybe somebody more approachable, someone to emulate? Often we are impressed and awed by t...

  • Added: Mar 17, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:57
Caption: Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Even with the impact of the coronavirus on music life in Germany, we've been able to fill most of the programs with fresh concert recordings. But t...

  • Added: Mar 23, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Piece image
This 100th anniversary celebration of the Würzburg Mozart Festival features two very special guests: A violin and a viola owned by no less than Wol...

  • Added: Sep 29, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Conductor Kyrill Petrenko
How do you capture star-crossed lovers in music? And can a symphony pull a composer out of an emotional rut? The Berlin Philharmonic under chief co...

  • Added: Oct 06, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Eberbach Abbey
Tempest-tossed voyages over billowing seas, sparse winter landscapes shimmering with snow – it's all but impossible not to see such dramatic scenes...

  • Added: Oct 13, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:59
Piece image
It's possibly the most iconic piece of music in the entire Western classical repertoire: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, with its soaring "Ode to Joy" ...

  • Added: Oct 21, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Caption: Conductor Philippe Herreweghe
What do you turn to when a loss is so great that you can't put your grief into words? For many people, it's music – but such music isn't strictly s...

  • Added: Oct 27, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58
Piece image
What makes a symphony legendary? Is it a certain level of grandeur or complexity? Or can just the initial ideas of a never completed work be just a...

  • Added: Nov 04, 2021
  • Length: 01:57:58