Twenty-seven years ago, a festival was born in Berlin that distinguished itself from the many international music festivals Europe has to offer. Young Euro Classic wanted not only to provide a platform for the best youth orchestras of the continent, but especially to create a place where music brings people, cultures and generations into contact with each other. This founding principle has barely lost significance in the past decades. On the contrary: in a time when, as Gabriele Minz himself puts it, many people view the world with uncertainty and feel that everything is threatening to drift apart, the festival's original mission perhaps sounds more timely than ever. This edition confirms once again that classical music can be much more than an artistic experience alone. It creates a space in which young people from different parts of the world truly meet each other, learn to understand one another and, without grand words, experience that a shared musical tradition remains one of the most direct answers to division.
That is also the undercurrent that continually returns in the conversation that Werner De Smet conducted for Klassiek Centraal with General Director Dr. Gabriele Minz and Project Manager Carolin Trispel. Young Euro Classic was never conceived as a succession of summer concerts, but always as a meeting place where artistic excellence, cultural curiosity and international dialogue reinforce each other. Behind the impressive list of participating orchestras lies a vision that has hardly changed since its founding: young musicians need not only an international platform, but equally a context in which they can meet each other without competition as a driving force, but with exchange as a starting point. In that sense, the festival has grown over twenty-seven years into an established institution on the international festival calendar, without ever abandoning the original ideal that underpinned it.
A European dream in Berlin
That idea emerged in Berlin shortly after reunification, a city that was still very much seeking its new identity and at the same time was becoming the symbol of a Europe in which old borders were slowly beginning to disappear. Against that backdrop, Gabriele Minz and Willi Steul – then chairman of the Deutscher Freundeskreis europäischer Jugendorchester e. V., the association that was at the basis of Young Euro Classic – developed the idea for a festival that would allow the European idea to speak not through political language, but through music. "When we founded Young Euro Classic as a private initiative, we wanted especially to keep alive the idea of a democratic and open Europe," says Minz. "We were convinced that music connects people with each other, regardless of national borders, generations or language." That conviction still forms the foundation of the festival. Precisely for that reason, Young Euro Classic, twenty-seven years later, still carries the same core, even though the festival has since grown into a much larger event.
From the beginning, it was therefore more than a festival in the classical sense of the word. It had to become a place where exceptionally talented young musicians from diverse countries and cultural backgrounds could meet at the highest artistic level, without competition setting the tone. The exchange of ideas, traditions and interpretations became the actual goal, and Berlin proved to be no coincidence the ideal place for it. No other city carries the history of division and reunification so visibly with it, and precisely that tension makes it a logical backdrop for a festival that does not want to confirm borders but to transcend them. From that same thought also emerged the Diplomatic Board, in which embassies of the participating countries continue to play not only a supporting but also a symbolic role in the international anchoring of the festival.
What seems almost self-evident today was far from it at the start. The festival began as a one-time project around the millennium, with no guarantee of continuation. That it still exists twenty-seven years later and enjoys international recognition was never foreseen. It was especially the reactions of audiences, press and musicians that convinced the initiators to keep building. In doing so, there also grew the awareness that the original European focus was too limited to support the project's dynamics. Although the first editions brought together exclusively European youth orchestras, it soon became clear that musical tradition cannot be confined within geographical boundaries. "The European orchestra tradition has left deep traces worldwide," says Minz. "Precisely for that reason it is so interesting to see how different countries have embraced that tradition and given their own voice to it." That insight, moreover, did not grow without resistance. The concept of a festival exclusively for youth orchestras was initially met with considerable skepticism and was sometimes even viewed with pity. Few believed that young ensembles could captivate a broad audience for several weeks. The artistic quality of the participating orchestras has since thoroughly refuted those doubts.
Thus Young Euro Classic grew into an international meeting place where orchestras from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America and Oceania meet each other in one shared context. The European classical tradition remains the starting point, not as a norm or boundary, but as a common language in which differences may be heard. What once began as a European initiative, developed into a laboratory where diverse performance practices, musical backgrounds and cultural sensibilities continuously influence and enrich each other. This international expansion has not moved the festival away from its original mission, but rather strengthened it. Young Euro Classic proves today that artistic quality is not determined by age or origin, but by talent, conviction and the willingness to listen to each other across boundaries.
For this edition, Minz summarizes the red thread of the program in three words: Zuversicht als Klang – hope and confidence as sound. In a time when many people view the world with uncertainty, the festival wants to show that music can give hope, can connect people and can help shape the future. Not naive waiting, she emphasizes, but a motor to remain capable of taking action.
A festival that allows itself to emerge
That artistic quality remains the foundation of the programming today, even if it is not imposed in a strict format. After consultation with the artistic leadership – cellist Alban Gerhardt and Mathias Hinke – the orchestras largely determine their own program, their soloists and conductors. Only a number of global guidelines ensure balance: a large symphonic work, a solo concerto, contemporary music and ideally a work from their own cultural context. "The orchestras are not only our guests, they also help determine the character of the festival," says Carolin Trispel, and precisely in that lies the uniqueness of the whole: the festival is not assembled as a program, but emerges as a sum of artistic voices.
This philosophy is also consistently applied in the selection of orchestras. Artistic excellence remains the first criterion, but attention is also paid to international distribution and variety. Usually the national youth orchestras submit their own candidacy, but sometimes the organization also takes the initiative to invite a particular ensemble. Some ensembles return regularly, such as the European Union Youth Orchestra and the Bundesjugendorchester, who are invited almost every year because of their special significance for the festival, while others have the opportunity to present themselves in Berlin via a rotation system.
For many young musicians, such an invitation means more than a performance: it is a form of recognition, a confirmation that their trajectory is seen, and often also a first step in an international network that will help determine their further development. Some orchestras have even come into being partly because of this ambition: the Portuguese Jovem Orquestra Portuguesa was founded, according to its own account, precisely with a view to an invitation to Young Euro Classic. For musicians who ultimately do get to play in the Konzerthaus Berlin, that remains a moment they will remember for the rest of their lives – not only because of the hall itself, but because it makes their years of work visible and recognized.
The audience is also an integral part of this dynamic. Over the years, the festival has built up a loyal audience, some of whom even plan their stay in Berlin deliberately during the festival weeks to be able to attend multiple concerts. For many, Young Euro Classic has become a fixed appointment in the summer. At the same time, the organization continues to seek new generations through music schools, collaborations with Berlin districts and digital channels. Striking in this regard is the openness with which the audience approaches the program: not only the great classics, but also contemporary music and lesser-known works are received with the same curiosity. This attitude makes it possible to give new music a full place, which is further strengthened by the European Composition Prize – awarded by the Mayor of Berlin – where a lay jury crowns the best world or German premiere of the festival and thus emphasizes that new music does not belong exclusively in the hands of specialists.
Although Young Euro Classic has in the meantime become a global festival, the European idea has according to Minz essentially remained the same as at its founding – although it may be more important today than ever. In a time when international tensions are increasing again, she sees culture as one of the few areas where genuine encounter is still possible. "At Young Euro Classic, everyone meets on equal terms," she says. This principle is evident in the Diplomatic Board and in the equal treatment of all participating orchestras. This creates a festival in which musicians not only represent their own tradition, but also, without forcing it, embody a form of cultural diplomacy. Minz also points out that Young Euro Classic takes place at a time when the major concert halls in Berlin traditionally take their summer break. It is precisely because of this that the festival has grown into a unique meeting place in the city's cultural life, where for seventeen consecutive days young musicians from all over the world can meet each other and the public.
The 2026 edition makes that vision tangible in an exceptionally rich and international programme, with debut orchestras from, among others, Luxembourg, China, Turkmenistan, Slovenia and Italy, alongside the fiftieth anniversary of the European Union Youth Orchestra. For the first time in the festival's history, moreover, a choir alone fills an entire concert evening: the Estonian National Opera Boys' Choir. On top of this come cross-border projects in which genres and traditions intersect, such as the encounter between the South Indian Konnakol Trio around Karthik Mani and jazz musicians around saxophonist Jakob Manz, or the collaboration between the Polish Penderecki Youth Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Americas, which together rehearse a new programme for a shared debut concert.
In the series Future Now – Musical Diaries, that openness is taken further: ensembles from Argentina, Morocco, Vietnam and Tajikistan, together with an international ensemble from four nations, present their contemporary perspective on their own musical tradition. And with YEC im Kiez, the festival ventures into Berlin's urban space itself – on 3 August, for example, musicians from the Bundesjugendorchester and the National Youth Orchestra of the USA come together for two pop-up concerts in the city's neighbourhoods, away from the Konzerthaus.
A look at the future
Minz and Trispel look with realism at what lies ahead, but without doubt about the core. The symphonic youth orchestra remains the heart of the festival, while the context around it continues to grow through new collaborations and urban initiatives. Trispel thus wants to further develop the Festival im Festival format over the coming years – with which the festival has already opened the view towards musical traditions outside the classical orchestral world – together with a further expansion of YEC im Kiez. The greatest challenge does not lie in the artistic content, but in the financial reality of cultural organisations today. Digital media will play an increasingly important role, but solely as a gateway, never as a replacement for the live experience.
Because ultimately, that remains precisely the essence of Young Euro Classic: the conviction that music only truly gains its meaning when it unfolds live, in the same space, between people who meet not via screens but via sound. There, in that shared presence, hope remains audible as music.