Showing attitude with music?

The chamber music festival BTHVN WOCHE will take place this year from 8 to 11 May 2024. To mark the anniversary of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Daniel Hope will dedicate five events to the theme of "Humanism". Advance tickets go on sale on 26 February.

On the 200th anniversary of the premiere of Beethoven's last symphony, Daniel Hope, President of the Beethoven-Haus and Artistic Director of BTHVN WOCHE, is concerned with the question of the importance of humanity in the face of the numerous crises we are currently experiencing. "It was important to me to consider Beethoven's utopian message, which he formulates in his 'Ninth', in the light of the current situation and to pose the question of what remains of human love and brotherhood in the present, with all its crises and conflicts," says Daniel Hope, describing his approach for this year's chamber music festival. "There is much that reminds us of discrimination, war, suffering and exile in earlier times."

In the opening concert in the Chamber Music Hall (8 May, 7 pm), Hope will take the audience on a musical journey to "America", the land of dreams and exile, with works in various instrumentations by Anton Dvorak, Aaron Copland, Maurice Ravel, Hans Eisler, George Gershwin and Jake Heggie. On the following two days (9 and 10 May), two music theatre productions are on the programme, for which the Junges Theater Bonn was chosen as the venue.

The chamber music festival ends on 11 May at 7 pm with a rediscovery: "I am delighted that Daniel Hope has included the piano quartet by the largely forgotten Jewish composer Friedrich Gernsheim as the last work in the programme for BTHVN WOCHE 2024. It is a very conciliatory gesture. Gernsheim's music was banned by the National Socialists and has hardly been heard since," explains Malte Boecker, Director of the Beethoven-Haus. "Performing this music again today is a conscious sign against its marginalisation." Gernsheim's composition will be performed alongside a piano quintet by Beethoven's contemporary Johann Nepomuk Hummel and a piano quartet by Beethoven himself (WoO 36 No. 3).

Daniel Hope himself can also be heard in all concerts, together with his musician friends Adrien La Marca (viola), Josephine Knight (cello), Stéphane Logerot (double bass) and Jacques Ammon, piano. Baritone legend Thomas Hampson and chansonnier Horst Maria Merz as well as percussionist Alexander Ponet will join them for the music theatre pieces. The anniversary edition of the BTHVN WOCHE was made possible by the generous support of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

The two multimedia music theatre pieces form the centrepiece of the festival. On the first evening (9 May, 7 pm), the chronicle of a year that was to change everything will unfold. Under the motto "Berlin 1938 - The fateful year", two broadcasters and presenters, played by Thomas Hampson and Horst Maria Merz, recall the time before the Second World War, when freedoms dwindled and dark shadows loomed. The stories of musicians and writers who fought back are told. The texts are set to music by Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler and Cole Porter, as well as classical works by Johann Sebastian Bach and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

The second evening (10 May, 6 pm) "Los Angeles 1943 - Escape to Paradise" is dedicated to the stories of those who were disenfranchised, discriminated against and fled during the Nazi era. Music by Irving Berlin, Arnold Schönberg, Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington is interwoven with thoughts by Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer to create a multi-faceted radio play that paints a vivid picture of humanity at its best and worst.

Can you take a stand with music? As a musician, can you use music to express a critical stance towards the threats to our free and democratic basic order? And how? Daniel Hope will discuss this central question, which the BTHVN WOCHE 2024 raises, in a panel discussion with Thomas Hampson on 11 May at 11 a.m. in the Chamber Music Hall.

A brochure with the detailed programme is available in the Chamber Music Hall, in the shop of the Beethoven-Haus and in numerous public places in Bonn and can be downloaded from the website. The programme is also available at https://www.beethoven.de.

Tickets go on sale on 26 February. Tickets for the BTHVN WOCHE events are available in the Beethoven-Haus shop, at www.bonnticket.de and at the usual eventim advance booking offices.

Artist photos will be sent on request or can be downloaded from the artists' websites.

BTHVN WOCHE 2024
Humanism
Chamber music festival
8 to 11 May 2024
Artistic director: Daniel Hope

Contact:
Ursula Timmer-Fontani 
Head of Corporate Communications 
Beethoven-Haus Bonn 
presse@beethoven.de
Phone +49 (0)228 98175-16

BTHVN2024 - 200 years of the Ninth Symphony
To mark the 200th anniversary of the Ninth Symphony, the Beethoven-Haus has devised a programme of events that looks at the anniversary of this important composition from various perspectives. On 7 and 8 May 2024, two celebratory concerts with a reconstruction of the premiere programme from 1824 will take place in the Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal. The project was developed in cooperation with the musicology department of the University of Vienna and the Vienna Academy Orchestra, which will also be conducting the performance in Wuppertal under the direction of Martin Haselböck. The media partner is WDR, which will also record the concerts for TV and radio and stream them live on the internet. Prior to this, an international academic conference on the Ninth Symphony will take place in the Chamber Music Hall from 4 to 6 May. On 2 May, the special exhibition "Bernstein's Beethoven - Ode to Freedom" will open, which is dedicated to the great American conductor Leonard Bernstein as a committed Beethoven mediator and his legendary performance of the Ninth Symphony at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the chamber music festival BTHVN WOCHE will take place from 8 to 11 May under the motto "Humanism". The anniversary programme of the Beethoven-Haus was made possible by funding from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

About the Beethoven-Haus Bonn:
Founded in 1889, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn Association is regarded as the leading international Beethoven centre. It has set itself the task of keeping Beethoven's life, work and influence alive. The cultural institution includes the world's most important Beethoven collection, the museum in Beethoven's birthplace with over 100,000 visitors per year (before corona), a musicological research department, library and publishing house as well as the Hermann J. Abs Chamber Music Hall. Supported by over 700 friends, sponsors and members from over 20 countries, supported by the federal government, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Rhineland Regional Association and the federal city of Bonn, the Beethoven-Haus fulfils a cultural mission of national and international importance. The violinist Daniel Hope has been President since March 2020.