Donaueschinger Musiktage 2024

Since the Donaueschinger Musiktage were founded in 1921 as a forum for advanced chamber music under princely patronage, they have played a key role in shaping the development of new music in Europe. After 1950, the festival became a large-scale orchestral and vocal festival thanks to the involvement of what was then Südwestfunk and is now SWR, in which the radio ensembles – SWR Symphony Orchestra, SWR Vocal Ensemble and SWR Experimental Studio – are important partners for the composers. Today established as a meeting place for composers, students, music lovers and the (not only) German-speaking industry, the festival can count on a large audience of 6,000 people annually, who came from 33 countries in 2023.

Under the title alonetogether, the 2024 festival is dedicated to the paradox of musical performances being both solitary and intimate as well as public and communal. To this end, it explores the most diverse constellations of individuals and groups. It is one of the fascinating, as yet little-studied phenomena of concert life that an audience of 1,000 people can listen just as devotedly to a single person as to a large orchestra, whereby the relationship inevitably changes. Every concert, every installation creates a specific dispositive through the format of how the individual and the group relate to each other – musically, spatially, medially, socially – both between the musicians and between the musicians and the audience. The works in the two orchestral concerts sketch out very different relationships between composers, soloists and orchestra. In addition to 21 world premieres, the Musiktage will present premieres by musicians such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who will be performing as a soloist at the festival for the first time.

The Donaueschinger Musiktage 2024 are supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

Further information:
musikfreunde-donaueschingen.de

Dates

October 17 – 20, 2024
Various locations, Donaueschingen