Although there are still a few months to go, the organizers of the Dessau Kurt Weill Festival have their hands full. For artists, participation is associated with hopes – for new formats and a young audience, which could also be more enthusiastic about piano music.
Dessau-Roßlau (dpa/sa) – Under the motto “In the sign of departure”, the Dessau Kurt Weill Festival 2023 wants to arouse the public’s curiosity about new musical formats. According to the organizers, almost 50 events, whether chansons or piano concerts, are on the program from February 24th to March 12th. The festival invites you on a journey through time from the 1920s to the present.
The internationally renowned pianist Sebastian Knauer was won as the “Artist-in-Residence” and thus as the “face” of the festival. It is a great honor and pleasure for him, he said. Performances by actors Klaus Maria Brandauer and Angela Winkler and jazz greats such as Swedish trombonist Nils Landgren and US singer Jocelyn B. Smith are also planned during the festival.
In the opinion of the classical pianist Knauer, it is important to offer new formats and venues for young, new audiences. “You have to take away their shyness that a piano concerto is something very serious where you have to sit very still,” he said. It’s about having fun with the music, taking people with you, despite the seriousness of a topic.
Venues of the festival in honor of the composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), who wrote the “Threepenny Opera” and was a star on Broadway in New York, are his native town of Dessau and the surrounding area, Halle, Bad Lauchstädt (Saalekreis) and Wittenberg. The musicologist Constanze Mitter is responsible for the artistic direction together with the music producer Gerhard Kampf.
