There are festivals that primarily 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 many years. Anyone who enters the Konzerthaus Berlin between July 31 and August 16 this summer will not see a museum of classical music, but a living organism: young musicians from Europe, Asia, Africa and America who move through repertoire, styles and traditions with self-evident freedom.
That is perhaps the greatest achievement of Young Euro Classic. The festival has long stopped pretending that classical music would be a closed European discipline. The twenty-seventh edition bears 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 directors Alban Gerhardt and Mathias Hinke. Not the naïve optimism of those who exclude reality, but the belief that music creates connections that words cannot. And that optimism is contagious.
The programme 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 the equally young Aurel Dawidiuk. Immediately, the core of the festival is captured in one concert: youthful virtuosity coupled with a repertoire tradition that is continually reclaimed anew. Two times twenty-five years on stage: something will spark.
The piano as a world instrument
Notable this year is the prominent presence of the piano. As if Young Euro Classic deliberately wants to show how versatile the instrument has become. From Brahms and Tchaikovsky to Chen Qigang and Chary Nurymov: each time the keyboard receives a different cultural hue. The Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine returns to Berlin with Brahms' First Piano Concerto under the direction of Oksana Lyniv (August 1). Such a performance inevitably takes on a political undertone, but Young Euro Classic is wise 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 continues to function as an autonomous artistic language.
A day later, Joseph Moog with the Orchestre National des Jeunes du Luxembourg hurls Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini into the hall (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 effortlessly coexist in Chary Nurymov's piano concerto. It is almost too much of a good thing. Almost.
On August 3, a historic moment is on the programme. The European Union Youth Orchestra celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. Spanish violinist María Dueñas, one of the most exciting young soloists at the moment, performs Brahms' Violin Concerto. Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony completes the programme with conductor Elim Chan. Anyone who claims that the European ideal is culturally hollow 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 an excellent opportunity to hear how her superior mastery and refined phrasing dialogue with the young, hungry strings of the Viennese school. A rare opportunity to hear an underestimated masterpiece in ideal circumstances.
Tradition without borders
Each year Young Euro Classic has its debutants, and they are remarkably interesting this year. Perhaps the most unexpected is 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 the great-great-grandson of Jean Sibelius. Alongside Beethoven's unshakeable architectural laws of nature, that cross-pollination promises to disrupt traditional orchestral boundaries in a healthy way. If that is not Young Euro Classic in its purest form, I don't know what is.
For the very 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 centuries-old Baltic choral tradition to the Berlin stage. At a time when vocal polyphony is often pushed to the margins of major concert halls, this is a powerful statement: the voice as the most pure and direct instrument of human connection.
Young Euro Classic has long since ceased to be merely a festival for the great symphony. The jazz programme is particularly strong this year. The Jong Metropole Symphonic Jazz Orchestra opens the jazz evenings on 6 August with Brazilian and Cuban rhythms under the direction of Jacomo Bairos. Pedro Carneiro and the Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa (7 August) take the audience into the sound world of saudade, that melancholic Portuguese longing that is untranslatable yet unmistakably resonant. The highlight is the Jakob Manz & Karthik Mani Project (11 August): an encounter between South Indian music and contemporary jazz, at the festival's own initiative. Such concerts demonstrate how naturally young musicians navigate between genres today.
Even when the Orchestra of the Americas collaborates with the Penderecki Youth Orchestra (10 August), no casual multicultural showcase emerges, but a serious musical project. The German premiere of Gabriela Ortiz' Antrópolis – by the three-time Grammy winner – fits perfectly within that logic: presenting contemporary music not as compulsory interlude, but as an essential part of today's repertoire.
The music of tomorrow
For the fourth time, Young Euro Classic is organising its FUTURE NOW Musical Diaries series. Five ensembles from Tajikistan, Vietnam, Morocco, Argentina and Berlin present themselves each 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 (2 August) lets electronic avant-garde collide with the millennia-old Ả Đào singing tradition, the Moroccan ensemble JISR (8 August) bridges Arab-Andalusian modality and contemporary composition techniques, the Argentine ni-va Music Ensemble works with synthesisers and algorithmic structures. Young Euro Classic seems to have simply left behind the opposition between innovation and tradition. For this generation of musicians, there is no longer a fundamental rupture between symphonic culture, jazz, electronic music or local traditions. Everything can become material. Anyone attending only the evening concerts misses a world.
After a break of several years, concert introductions are also returning. For a selection of evening concerts, experts are invited to explain the programme in the Werner-Otto-Saal. For the critical listener, they are an indispensable compass for understanding the historical layering and compositional subtleties in advance. And sometimes those brief conversations are simply enough to turn a curious visitor into a convinced enthusiast.
While many European cultural institutions struggle with ageing audiences, identity questions and the question of how relevant classical music can still be today, Young Euro Classic seems remarkably relaxed about looking towards the future. Not out of nostalgia for a vanished Europe, but out of curiosity about what music has become worldwide: mobile, hybrid, multilingual and culturally porous. In Berlin this summer, not a defensive culture rings out, but an open dialogue between generations, continents and traditions.
Perhaps that is ultimately Young Euro Classic's greatest achievement: the festival proves that the future of classical music does not lie somewhere on the horizon, but is already unfolding here and now – in young musicians who unself-consciously bring the world into the concert hall. Klassiek Centraal is deliberately heading to Berlin this summer and reporting on location about the most striking concerts and discoveries.