There are festivals that mainly celebrate their own tradition. And there are festivals that show what the future looks like. Young Euro Classic has belonged to that second category for years now. Anyone who steps into the Konzerthaus Berlin this summer between July 31 and August 16 will see no museum of classical music, but a living organism: young musicians from Europe, Asia, Africa and America who move through repertoire, styles and traditions with obvious freedom.
That is perhaps the greatest merit of Young Euro Classic. The festival has long since stopped pretending that classical music would be a closed European discipline. The twenty-seventh edition carries the subtitle Zuversicht als Klang – confidence as sound. In times of increasing pessimism, this is a courageous programmatic choice by festival director Dr. Gabriele Minz and artistic leaders Alban Gerhardt and Mathias Hinke. Not the naive optimism of those who shut out reality, but the belief that music creates connections that words cannot. And that optimism is contagious.
The program reads like a musical world map. The Bundesjugendorchester opens on July 31 with Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto, performed by 25-year-old Georgian Giorgi Gigashvili under the baton of equally young Aurel Dawidiuk. Immediately, the essence of the festival is captured in one concert: youthful virtuosity combined with a repertoire tradition that is constantly being reclaimed. Two times twenty-five years on the podium: something will spark.
The piano as a world instrument
Notable this year is the prominent presence of the piano. As if Young Euro Classic wants to deliberately show how versatile the instrument has become. From Brahms and Tchaikovsky to Chen Qigang and Chary Nurymov: the keyboard constantly takes on a different cultural hue. The Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine returns to Berlin with Brahms' First Piano Concerto under the baton of Oksana Lyniv (August 1). Such a performance naturally acquires a political undertone, but Young Euro Classic is sensible enough not to fall into symbolic rhetoric. The strength of the festival lies precisely in the fact that music here does not serve as an illustration of current events, but remains functioning as an autonomous artistic language.
A day later, Joseph Moog tosses Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini into the hall with the Orchestre National des Jeunes du Luxembourg (August 2). The National Youth Orchestra of the USA comes on August 4 with Kirill Gerstein and Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F major, the orchestra of the Zhejiang Conservatory of Music brings on August 5 Chen Qigang's Er Huang – a work that incorporates Eastern sound worlds into a lush, almost impressionistic orchestral language – and the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Turkmenistan lets us hear on August 9 how folkloric motifs and twentieth-century avant-garde blend effortlessly in the piano concerto by Chary Nurymov. It is almost too much of a good thing. Almost.
On August 3, a historic moment is on the program. The European Union Youth Orchestra celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. Spanish violinist María Dueñas, one of the most exciting young soloists of the moment, plays Brahms' Violin Concerto. Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony completes the program with conductor Elim Chan. Anyone who claims that the European ideal is culturally hollowed out need only come and listen on August 3.
The Angelika Prokopp Sommerakademie der Wiener Philharmoniker (August 14) brings our compatriot Anneleen Lenaerts as soloist for Glière's rarely performed harp concerto in E-flat major. It is a golden opportunity to hear how her superior mastery and refined phrasing dialogue with the young, hungry strings of the Vienna school. A rare chance to hear an underestimated masterpiece under ideal circumstances.
Tradition without borders
Every year Young Euro Classic has its debutants, and this year they are remarkably interesting. The most unexpected is perhaps that of the Slovenian Youth Orchestra (August 13). They not only bring Beethoven's Fifth, but also the German premiere of Entropia, a concerto for electric bass and orchestra by and with Lauri Porra – the Finnish metal bassist who happens to be Jean Sibelius's great-great-grandson. Alongside Beethoven's unwavering architectural rules of order, that cross-pollination promises to productively disrupt traditional orchestra boundaries. If that is not Young Euro Classic in its purest form, I don't know what is.
For the first time in festival history, an entire evening is not entrusted to an instrumental orchestra, but to a choir. The Estonian National Opera Boys' Choir (August 15) brings the centuries-old Baltic choral tradition to the Berlin stage. In a time when vocal polyphony is often pushed to the margins of the great concert halls, this is a powerful statement: the voice as the purest and most direct instrument of human connection.
Young Euro Classic is long since no longer just a festival for the great symphony. The jazz line is particularly strong this year. The Jong Metropole Symphonic Jazz Orchestra opens the jazz evenings on August 6 with Brazilian and Cuban rhythms under the direction of Jacomo Bairos. Pedro Carneiro and the Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa (August 7) take the audience into the sound world of saudade, that melancholic Portuguese longing that is untranslatable but unmistakably audible. The highlight becomes the Jakob Manz & Karthik Mani Project (August 11): a meeting between South Indian music and contemporary jazz, at the festival's own initiative. Such concerts show how naturally young musicians navigate between genres today.
Even when the Orchestra of the Americas collaborates with the Penderecki Youth Orchestra (August 10), no casual multicultural showcase emerges, but a serious musical project. The German premiere of Gabriela Ortiz's Antrópolis – by the three-time Grammy winner – fits perfectly within that logic: presenting contemporary music not as a mandatory intermezzo, but as an essential part of today's repertoire.
The music of tomorrow
For the fourth time, Young Euro Classic is organizing its series FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries. Five ensembles from Tajikistan, Vietnam, Morocco, Argentina and Berlin present themselves every Saturday afternoon before the major evening concerts. What happens here has little to do with the classical debate about innovation versus tradition. The Vietnamese project Lách Tách (August 2) lets electronic avant-garde collide with the millennium-old Ả Đào singing tradition, the Moroccan ensemble JISR (August 8) builds a bridge between Arab-Andalusian modality and contemporary composition techniques, the Argentinian ni-va Music Ensemble works with synthesizers and algorithmic structures. Young Euro Classic seems to have simply left the opposition between innovation and tradition behind. For this generation of musicians, there is no fundamental break anymore between symphonic culture, jazz, electronic music or local traditions. Everything can become material. Anyone attending only the evening concerts is missing a whole world.
After a break of several years, concert introductions are also returning. For a selection of evening concerts, experts are invited to explain the program in the Werner-Otto-Saal. For the critical listener, they are an indispensable compass to understand the historical layering and compositional techniques beforehand. And sometimes those brief conversations are simply enough to turn a curious visitor into a convinced enthusiast.
While many European cultural institutions struggle with aging audiences, questions of identity and the question of how relevant classical music can still be today, Young Euro Classic seems remarkably relaxed about looking toward the future. Not out of nostalgia for a disappeared Europe, but out of curiosity about what music has become worldwide: mobile, hybrid, multilingual and culturally porous. In Berlin this summer, there is no defensive culture, but an open dialogue between generations, continents and traditions.
Perhaps that is ultimately the greatest achievement of Young Euro Classic: the festival proves that the future of classical music does not lie somewhere on the horizon, but is already taking place here and now – in young musicians who unapologetically bring the world into the concert hall. Klassiek Centraal is heading to Berlin this summer and will report on the spot about the most striking concerts and discoveries.