Donaueschingen Festival 2023

Established in 1921, the Donaueschingen Festival is the oldest festival of New Music in the world and most prominent of its kind in Germany. The festival has hosted the world premieres of some of the most renowned composers of the 20^th and 21^st century. Held every October, it offers audiences an overview of today’s contemporary musical avant-garde. The 2023 Donaueschingen Festival was the first edition produced under the artistic direction of Lydia Rilling.

Festival motto: colLABORation

The 2023 Donaueschingen Festival kicked off on 19 October with a podium discussion on “artistic collaboration” in reference to festival motto “colLABORation”. In the opening concert on 20 October, the SWR Symphony Orchestra presented works exclusively written by women composers. These included one by 91-year-old Éliane Radigue, for which there is no established score and whose production was solely based on verbal communication. The festival also presented new works by Matana Roberts and Clara Iannotta, as well as the German premiere of a piece by Sara Glojnarić. Out of the 23 world premieres performed at the 2023 festival, some 70 percent were written by women composers. And more than two thirds of all the featured composers visited Donaueschingen for the first time.

True to its motto, the festival featured a collaboration between the performer/composer Jessie Marino and the Norwegian trio Pinquins. It also featured a joint production between the writers Felicitas Hoppe and Anja Kampmann and the composers Iris ter Schiphorst and Elnaz Seyedi, who created an intensive dialogue between language and music. The New York quartet Yarn/Wire gave their debut performance in Germany together with three well-known musicians from New York’s improv scene: Peter Evans, Ingrid Laubrock and Tyshawn Sorey.
 
The Orangery, open again after years of renovation, served as the festival’s sound art centre along with the museum Art.Plus and the Fischhaus, with free admission to four sound installations. In view of the overwhelming interest in the installations in past years, the organisers offered tours of the installations this year. 

Click here (external link, opens in a new window) to view the festival programme.

The music festival on SWR2

A total of 16 world premieres, as well as one European and one German premiere were broadcasted live on the radio and via the SWR2 app. All the other concerts were broadcasted at a later time on SWR2 and are accessible to online users via the SWR2 app and on SWRKultur.de (external link, opens in a new window). The two concerts performed by the SWR Symphony Orchestra at the festival opening and finale were broadcasted as video livestreams on SWRKultur.de (external link, opens in a new window).

Artistic director of the Donaueschingen Festival: Lydia Rilling