Ludwigsburg Palace Festival
The Ludwigsburg Castle Festival (official international name Ludwigsburg Festival ) is a cultural festival with a program in the areas of music , dance , theater and literature that takes place annually between May and July in Ludwigsburg . Founded in 1932, the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival is one of the oldest festivals in German-speaking countries. The center of the festival is the Ludwigsburg residential palace .
Since 1980, they have also been called the Baden-Württemberg International Festival and, as the state's official state festival, have also made guest appearances in idyllic monasteries and castles throughout Baden-Württemberg.
Jochen Sandig has been the artistic director of the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival since October 2019 .
History of the Festival
When Wilhelm Krämer founded the Ludwigsburg Mozart Community in 1931 and laid the foundation for today's Baden-Württemberg International Festival with the Palace Concerts the following year , the program was limited to a few chamber concerts. Extensive program extensions under the artistic direction of Wolfgang Gönnenwein (1972-2004) made the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival a festival with almost a hundred events and lasting around three months. Since 1980 , the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival, the official state festival of Baden-Württemberg, has been called the Baden-Württemberg International Festival. The artistic director Wulf Konold and chief conductor Michael Hofstetter ran the festival from 2005 to 2009. From 2010 to 2019 Thomas Wördehoff was director of the festival program. Since October 1, 2019, they have been led by Jochen Sandig.
Program
The range of events includes concerts by important contemporary artists, chamber music, recitals, musical theater, drama, dance, performance and world music. Under the direction of Thomas Wördehoff, the festival developed into a "festival of interpreters" and relied on artistic surprises.
music
Concerts form a programmatic focus of the festival. Every year soloists, conductors, orchestras and chamber music formations are guests, including Cecilia Bartoli , Kurt Masur and his Orchester National de France , Martha Argerich , John Eliot Gardiner with his ensembles, Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica , Anne-Sophie Mutter , Alfred Brendel , Sabine Meyer , Maxim Wengerow and the Leipzig String Quartet , the Duisburg Philharmonic , Christine Schäfer , Isabelle Faust , Till Brönner , Pinchas Zukerman and others. a.
In 2010 the “Song Conversation” series was established, in which musicians from different musical genres meet on stage. During this musical exchange, Bill Frisell , Joe Henry and Brad Mehldau (2010) as well as Nguyên Lê , Gianmaria Testa and Paolo Fresu (2011) met each other. In 2012 this concert series was continued with Bugge Wesseltoft , Wolfgang Muthspiel and Dhafer Youssef . In 2011, the Tunisian singer and oud player Dhafer Youssef also curated the concert series “Music in Ecstasy”. He has performed with the soprano Simone Kermes and the Turkish clarinetist Hüsnü Şenlendirici , among others . In 2016, Judith Holofernes , Käptn Peng and Gisbert zu Knyphausen met under the thematic focus “Passages - Stories” in the “Song Conversation” series .
Playroom dance and theater
In the fields of dance and theater, the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival has been particularly active in recent times: With large international companies as well as with off-artists, they realize a program with numerous world premieres and German premieres. In recent years the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Nederlands Dans Theater , Sasha Waltz , the Compagnie Marie Chouinard , Heinz Spoerlis Zürcher Ballett, Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's company eastman and les ballets C de la B have been shown .
The centerpiece of the palace theater
In addition, the opera productions in the baroque Ludwigsburg Castle Theater shaped the identity of the festival. After Mozart stagings in the 1980s and early 1990s, the palace theater was reopened in 1998 after five years of restoration. Since then, in addition to an opera, it has provided space for literary and musical soirees, lectures, dance and theater projects and family events.
The ensemble of the Ludwigsburg Festival
The festival has had its own ensemble since 1972: the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival Orchestra traditionally plays the opening and closing concerts, the great classic open air & fireworks at Monrepos Castle and in the past has also played numerous opera productions in the castle theater. Guest performances and tours at home and abroad (most recently in 2006 in Götz Alsmann's ZDF classic show “Eine große Nachtmusik”, at the Schubertiade in Vorarlberg and at the Salzburg Festival) as well as radio, television and CD productions complement the activities of the Ensembles. Various chamber music ensembles are formed from the orchestra under the name of »Castle Soloists« and perform regularly at the Castle Festival. From 2005 to 2012 Michael Hofstetter was chief conductor of the festival ensemble. Various conductors have worked with the ensemble since the 2013 season. From 2015 to 2019 the Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen took over the position of chief conductor. The choir of the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival was dissolved in 2014.
Co-productions
Since 2006 there have been co-productions and guest performances with and at other festivals: 2006 with the Salzburg Festival (Mozart trilogy “Irrfahrten”, director: Joachim Schlömer , musical director: Michael Hofstetter , choir of the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival) and the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg . The Eastman company choreography "Babel [words]" was realized in collaboration with the Theater Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels), Sadler's Wells (London), Theater Festival Boulevard ('s-Hertogenbosch) and the Festspielhaus St. Pölten . The play "Richard II - Solo of a King" with Sven-Eric Bechtolf was co-produced with the Thalia Theater Hamburg . In 2012 the Teatro Real Madrid had a guest appearance together with les ballets C de la B with the performance of the music and dance theater "C (H) OERS" (choreography & direction: Alain Platel , musical director: Marc Piolett , choir master : Andrés Máspero ) at the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival.
In 2010, the Ludwigsburg Festival, who worked Film Academy Baden-Wuerttemberg , the Academy of Performing Arts Baden-Wuerttemberg and the Film and Media Festival gGmbH first time as part of the interdisciplinary festival "SOS - Stage on Screen / Screen on Stage" together. In 2011, the play "I invented Karl May" resulted in a cooperation between the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival and the Baden-Württemberg Academy of Performing Arts. For 2015, the festival joined forces with the Stuttgart International Animated Film Festival , the jazzopen Stuttgart , the animation institute of the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy and the Scala Theaterkino Ludwigsburg as part of the “New Music & Animation” event . In co-production with various European cultural institutions, the dance piece was in 2015 "En avant, Marche!" Developed at the next to the NTGent also the choreographer Alain Platel and director Frank van Laecke participated.
Together with the Insula Orchestra, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and the Theater der Welt 2017, the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival in 2017 produced a multimedia production of Joseph Haydn's “Creation” with the Catalan theater collective La Fura dels Baus . The German premiere of the piece took place in Ludwigsburg on June 1, 2017.
In addition, the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival is involved in education and has numerous partnerships with regional educational institutions.
Commissioned works
The Austrian composer and organist Wolfgang Mitterer wrote a work for the Aurelius Boys' Choir in Calw entitled “The Dream of Being” (text: Oliver Hoi), which was premiered at the 2010 opening concert. Further commissioned works were Richard van Schoor's vocal work “Koan” (2010) and the oratorio “The seven last words… in other words” (2012), Marc Ribot's adaptation of the works of John Cage, the concert “Notte d'amore” of the Baroque Ensembles L'Arpeggiata under the direction of Christina Pluhar and the production "Blofeld" by Mnozil Brass . In 2015 the London Sinfonietta commissioned the composition "Greezy" for string orchestra from the composer Mica Levi with the support of the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival and the Le Poisson Rouge ensemble .
Porters, sponsors and friends
The Ludwigsburg Palace Festival is largely funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg and the city of Ludwigsburg. In addition, sponsors, a board of trustees with representatives from business and public institutions as well as the Friends of the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival, founded in 1997, contribute to the financing. For 2020 the federal government will grant the festival a one-time grant of € 3 million. This is intended to increase the national visibility of the Castle Festival.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Castle Festival: Chronicle
- ↑ a b c Ludwigsburg Wördehoff era ends with 81 percent occupancy. In: SWR2. Südwestrundfunk , July 24, 2019, accessed November 25, 2019 .
- ^ Prof. Wilhelm Krämer, founder of the Schlossfestspiele, Ludwigsburg, inheritance acquisition, SWP / Bietigheimer Zeitung of May 31, 2016
- ↑ Baden-Württemberg State Archives
- ↑ New chief conductor: "With me everything is possible". Susanne Benda, Stuttgarter Zeitung, March 18, 2014
- ↑ Castle Festival without its own choir. By ilo, Stuttgarter Zeitung, July 23, 2014
- ↑ http://www.schlossfestspiele.de/de/festspiele/aktuelles/index.htm
- ↑ Program June 26, 2015
- ^ Castle Festival, Educational Partnerships: Young Musicians ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Castle Festival receives 3 million euros in funding. SWR aktuell, November 16, 2019