Programme Release 2023

On Thursday, October 20, Festival Director Thorsten Schmidt, Co-Artistic Director Igor Levit - live from Washington - and Dramaturg Anselm Cybinski presented the 2023 programme via livestream.

The 2023 Music Festival will take place from March 17 to April 15 under the motto "Together" and thus start a new era: it is the first year with pianist Igor Levit as co-artistic director of the music festival alongside artistic director Thorsten Schmidt. The programme includes 83 concerts at 25 venues in Heidelberg. 12 of them are district concerts of the newly forming Festivalcampus-Ensemble with free admission. In total, Heidelberger Frühling, as a year-round cultural enterprise, will offer 108 events in other festivals, concert series or other music formats in the 2022/23 season.

Guests at the 27th edition of the Musikfestival are great artists such as Asmik Grigorian, Kirill Gerstein, Vilde Frang, Renaud Capuçon, Jan Lisiecki, Nikolai Lugansky, Kian Soltani, Thomas Quasthoff, Antoine Tamestit, Peter Eötvös or Veronika Eberle as well as internationally renowned ensembles and orchestras such as the Gringolts Quartet, Cuarteto Casals, Quatuor Diotima, Collegium 1704, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Manchester Collective, Aurora Orchestra or the B'Rock Orchestra.

The festival has also always been both a platform, an action area, and a shelter for up-and-coming artists. For the first time in the festival's history, the Festivalcampus-Ensemble, an ensemble of young soloists, will open the Musikfestival and can be experienced in various formations during the following weeks.

With "Ligeti 100," the Heidelberger Frühling Musikfestival is dedicating a two-day focus point to the composer György Ligeti, who will celebrate his 100th birthday in 2023. In four concerts, the Klangforum Wien with renowned soloists under the direction of Peter Eötvös, the Quatuor Diotima or the KlangForum Heidelberg, among others, shed light on important aspects of his work.

The format "Carte Blanche for..." transfers the successful principle of Igor Levit's digital house concerts to the analog festival program in 2020: violinist Rakhi Singh, the Manchester Collective string quartet, Thomas Quasthoff and Shawn & The Wolf, as well as Igor Levit himself, surprise the audience by announcing what they will play only at the concert.

The Heidelberger Frühling Musikpreis 2023, donated by the founding partner of the festival, Heidelberg Materials, will be awarded to percussionist Martin Grubinger. Since 2013, the award has honored individuals who have made a substantial and lasting commitment to the teaching of classical music. The award ceremony will take place during the Musikfestival on April 5, 2023 at Heidelberg Materials.

Effective immediately, Heidelberger Frühling has a new brand identity that manifests the development from the music festival's founding in 1997 to the year-round events it now offers in various festivals, concert series and other music formats. Strategically and creatively, Heidelberger Frühling was accompanied by the Berlin agency for communication BOROS.