9-23 MAY 2027
Beethoven Festival Leipzig
Beethoven For All – the Leipzig Gewandhaus celebrates 200 years of musical
revolution
To mark the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s passing, the Leipzig
Gewandhaus is staging a festival of unsurpassed international prestige. The
Beethoven Festival Leipzig 2027 features a complete cycle of the symphonies,
world-renowned soloists such as Lang Lang, Igor Levit and Leonidas Kavakos,
chamber music with an exceptional roster of artists, a new version of Egmont,
and projects that reimagine Beethoven’s music for the present day.
In 2027, the spotlight of the music world will shine brightly upon Leipzig: 200
years after the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, the Gewandhaus mounts a
festival which presents Beethoven not as a monument, but as a radically
contemporary artist and a living source of inspiration for the artists of today.
The Festival opens with intense drama: Beethoven’s incidental music for
Goethe’s Egmont, with a new libretto by celebrated author Michael Lentz
(commissioned by the Gewandhausorchester). This highly political play deals
with oppression, the struggle for liberty and the indomitable spirit of resilience
of the individual in the face of authoritarian power. Against the backdrop of
current global conflicts, social tensions and challenges to democracy, this
material takes on particular urgency in Michael Lentz’s new adaptation.
Internationally celebrated theatre and film actor Tobias Moretti will narrate the
drama.
In addition to the new version of the Egmont text, the Festival will feature a
further world premiere commissioned by the Gewandhausorchester: Jörg
Widmann has taken Beethoven’s late fragment, Overture on B-A-C-H, as the
foundation for a new orchestral work. The fact that Beethoven engaged with
the music of Bach can certainly be seen as a sign of considerable admiration.
Widmann now carries this line of musical tradition forward into the present day,
employing modern means – a contemporary dialogue between Bach, Beethoven
and our own time.
The Festival is founded upon three main pillars: the performances of the
symphonies and major instrumental concertos by the Gewandhausorchester,
conducted by Gewandhauskapellmeister Andris Nelsons and featuring
internationally acclaimed soloists; Beethoven’s chamber music interpreted by
preeminent musicians of our age; projects that re-examine Beethoven’s music
and explore its contemporary relevance. The programme of the Festival spans
an arch from forms of interpretation stemming from the past two centuries to
crossover formats, jazz and even electronic perspectives of this great master’s
music.
The Festival assumes a particular historical dimension due to Beethoven’s close
connection to the Gewandhausorchester: the orchestra was the first in the world
to perform all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies as a cycle, indeed while the
composer was still alive. The Festival builds on this foundation.
Advance ticket sales for
subscribers and Gewandhauscard
holders commence
13 June 2026
Advance ticket sales for everyone
commence
27 June 2026
www.beethoven-festival.de
www.beethoven-festival.com
Gewandhaus zu Leipzig
Civic enterprise of the City of Leipzig
General Director Andreas Schulz
www.gewandhausorchester.de
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The 9th Symphony will be performed in a variety of settings: following the Festival at the
Gewandhausorchester’s annual open-air Klassik airleben concerts, in which the many thousands in
Rosental Park are invited to join in singing the final chorus, and preceding the Festival on the 1st of
January 2027 as a festive New Year’s Day concert in the Gewandhaus. Within the Festival itself, the
symphony will be performed as part of a community engagement project with the Stegreif Orchestra, as
well as in a version for soloists, choir, two pianos and timpani (based on Franz Liszt’s arrangement),
featuring, among others, the Gewandhaus Choir and the renowned piano duo Pavel Kolesnikov &
Samson Tsoy.
In addition to the symphonies, the Festival programme also focuses on works premiered by the
Gewandhausorchester, including the Triple Concerto in C major, Op. 56, for Piano, Violin, Cello and
Orchestra, and the Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 (Emperor).
Among the Festival’s exceptional roster of performers are Lang Lang, Leonidas Kavakos, Igor Levit,
Pablo Ferrández, Anna Prohaska, Julia Fischer, Michael Wollny, the Stegreif Orchestra, the
Gewandhaus Octet and the Gewandhaus Quartet, which will perform Beethoven’s string quartet oeuvre
in its entirety. In the Gewandhaus Quartet’s exploration of these masterpieces, the generational
perspective promises to be particularly fascinating: with rejuvenated membership – with the primarius
as unifying element – a new generation of musicians engages with Beethoven’s radical legacy.
The Beethoven Festival 2027 is an artistic statement: a statement of the power of tradition, of the open
mindedness of the Gewandhaus, and of a masterful composer whose music, even 200 years after his
passing, has lost none of its political and social explosiveness.