With the Festivalcampus-Ensemble, the Heidelberger Frühling realizes one of its central concerns: to create artistic fields of experimentation for young talents, to promote new and unusual ideas and to offer them opportunities to develop in a protected creative space.
In 2023, the Musikfestival formed its own ensemble for the first time in its history, which organized its own concerts. The Festivalcampus-Ensemble is now coming together for the third time as part of the Heidelberger Frühling Musikfestival 2025. Each year, the formation consists of a changing selection of young musicians who are characterized by outstanding soloistic skills as well as a broad artistic interest, creative independence and a highly developed understanding of the social significance of artistic activity. Their mission is to make music an enriching and inspiring experience for people.
In several working phases, the members of the Festivalcampus-Ensemble discuss questions about music, style, target groups, concert venues and formats and, building on this, develop their own concert and program concepts, which are performed at the Musikfestival.
At the center of the discourse of the current Festivalcampus-Ensemble is the motto of the Musikfestival 2025 "Liberated Time". In the 2025 edition of the festival, the audience will be able to experience the results in a variety of ways: in the free district concerts of re:start, in the LAB at Heidelberg Materials or on the main stages of the Musikfestival, together with festival artists.
The Festivalcampus-Ensemble 2024 was made up of 13 musicians aged between 22 and 30 from all over Europe who were at the beginning of their careers. Together, they organized six Brahms.LAB and nine re:start concerts with free admission in Heidelberg's districts. The focal composer of the 2024 festival season was Johannes Brahms, in particular his chamber music. In its concerts, the Festivalcampus-Ensemble spanned a musical arc from composers of the late Romantic period to contemporary music, pop, jazz and world music. With its concerts as part of the re:start program, the ensemble reached around 2000 people in Heidelberg's districts at venues such as CHAPEL in Südstadt, Metropolink's Commissary in Patrick-Henry-Village and the Augustinum on Emmertsgrund.
The ensemble consisted of Charlotte Thiele (violin), Juliette Beauchamp (violin), Benjamin Günst (violin), Wolke Milena Wilke (violin), Nina Tonji (viola), Toby Cook (viola), Pieter de Koe (violoncello), Bryan Cheng (violoncello), Hans Greve (double bass), Marlene Heiß (piano), Julius Schepansky (accordion/jazz piano), Žilvinas Brazauskas (clarinet) and Tamara Kurkiewicz (percussion).
The Festivalcampus-Ensemble 2023 was made up of 22 musicians who performed at the grand opening concert of the Heidelberger Frühling Musikfestival 2023 and in the following weeks in various line-ups at the re:start concerts with free admission in Heidelberg's districts.
The formation included the ensembles Feguro Quartet (Jona Schibilsky, Benjamin Günst, Toby Cook, Milan Drake), Nerida Quartet (Saskia Niehl, Nevena Tochev, Grace Leehan, Alma Tedde), Kandinsky Quartet (Hannah Kandinsky, Evgenii Artemenkov, Ignazio Alayza, Antonio Gervilla), qunst.quintett (Alexander Koval, Julia Obergfell*, Martin Fuchs, Andreas Becker) and the soloists Charlotte Thiele, Sara Göbel, Lisa Rauchbach, Aoi Selditz and Hans Greve.
*due to illness Stefan Zeininger, Augustin Gorisse and Vicente Castello stepped in