Musikfestival

In the arts sections, talk shows, and Sunday sermons, people complain that society is drifting apart, that we no longer listen to one another, and that everyone lives in their own reality. Open discourse no longer takes place; there is only the truth of one’s own bubble. Andreas Reckwitz has coined a term for this: the “society of singularities.” A society that prioritizes the unique above all else risks losing that shared space where people—in all their diversity and backgrounds—can still come together. Since its founding in 1997, the Heidelberger Frühling has sought to be just such a space—one that dissolves social bubbles and brings people together instead. We never came up with our festival themes just to seem original. No, we drew inspiration from them. We listened to the discussions taking place around us and, year after year, crafted a programme based on them.

However, the material we work with doesn’t come solely from the present moment. We connect the past with the present. The place where we came into being is also part of this material. I have always considered Heidelberg an ideal city for a festival, and one image in particular shaped my personal reflections on what I wanted to achieve here: the city as a palimpsest. All layers of the past and present remain visible here. They shape the identity of this city—and thus also that of the Heidelberger Frühling.

Let’s take the Konzerthaus Stadthalle as an example. Opened in 1903 as a meeting place for a society organized along class lines, it was reserved for an educated middle class that also found self-affirmation within its walls. Since its founding, it has witnessed a wide variety of social groupings and events. Following its renovation, the building itself has remained essentially the same, but the people it is meant to bring together today have changed—they are more diverse, more free, but also harder to unite into a community. This concert hall is therefore not only the home of the Heidelberger Frühling; it also represents a programmatic mission to offer events that take into account the various layers of this building’s identity.

Anyone who looks back through our festival programs will notice one thing: the identity of the Heidelberger Frühling is not a structure that has simply evolved over time. Rather, it is a skill that has been honed over time—namely, the ability to constantly reinvent itself in response to the changing society to which it responds. “Sound of Time” is therefore—rather than a 30th birthday greeting—a description of a principle that we have followed from the very beginning, without ever calling it by that name.

A festival, then, is not simply a programme that is performed. It is a space for communication that thrives on the relationships between artists, among audience members, and between the stage and the audience. When these three levels interact, the result is more than just entertainment or the experience of an aesthetic offering: it creates the sense of togetherness mentioned at the beginning—our festival family. The artistic program serves to foster this sense of togetherness and cohesion just as much as it serves the aesthetic dimension.

For me, the success of a festival edition is measured by whether a person, an artist, or an ensemble remains connected to the festival over the years. In 1997, emerging from Heidelberg’s 800th-anniversary celebration as a Brahms festival, this conviction was already firmly established before any structure existed to support it: A festival is, first and foremost, a bond; only then is it an institution. There is something very ancient about this: celebration, play, sound, and dance are among humanity’s earliest forms of cultural expression, long before concert halls even existed. A festival does not invent anything new; it carries on an ancient tradition.

At a festival like the Heidelberger Frühling, society engages in self-reflection. This is because, for a limited time, the rules of everyday life are set aside. When this is successful, it gives rise to what Hartmut Rosa calls “resonance”: that openness to engaging with themes that, through the medium of music and its dramaturgy, enables new perspectives, new questions, and new thoughts—for the audience as well as the artists.

The concert hall is one of the last places where several hundred people can share the same experience for hours on end without being able to comment on it or scroll past it. It is a space of the public sphere, as Jürgen Habermas understood it: a space, in other words, where people encounter one another not as customers but as citizens who, even if only for one evening, come to an understanding about something that concerns them all.

This kind of open-minded listening is the prerequisite for engagement. Harmony is not the goal of a concert. It is the negotiation between musicians, between the work and its interpretation, and between what the audience expects and what is offered to it. Democratic societies tolerate differences, exchange perspectives, and continually work to build mutual understanding. Dialogue and controversy are not disruptions, but rather the space in which common ground emerges in the first place.

A “we” based on listening, openness, and dialogue requires a resource that cannot be programmed: trust. A festival must have faith in artists before the world does. It must give them a stage before anyone knows them and entrust them with projects that will later become their artistic signature.

Trust can only flourish where there is freedom. Freedom of action is not a luxury, but a necessity. It allows for explorations that have no place in the routine of the established repertoire. And it opens up new horizons of meaning without providing ready-made answers.

This also applies to the role a festival plays in society. After World War I, the Salzburg Festival responded to the times with a European peace project. The Heidelberger Frühling, too, set out with a mission of its own. If I were to try to sum up what has emerged over the past thirty years in a single sentence, it would be this: The Heidelberger Frühling was never an attempt to manage a programme aimed at preserving tradition, but rather always an attempt to form a community of discourse through our artistic offerings and our formats.

No matter how much we listen, no matter how much public engagement there is, no matter how much trust there is, and no matter how much leeway there is, it all comes down to the same thing: resonance. Cultural institutions like the Heidelberger Frühling are not just the icing on the cake of society; they are part of its democratic infrastructure.