Orchestra

2020/21 we are celebrating the 250th birthday of Beethoven, the greatest son of the city of Bonn. The orchestra will pay its respect to its patron by challenging the composer’s life and work off- and onstage: His artistry and career, his vita and visions – Beethoven will be the lodestar for fascinating artistic examinations in all over the world.

The Beethoven Orchester Bonn is the driving force of music life in the city of Bonn. The orchestra performs more than 70 concerts and participates in around 100 nights at the municipal opera house each year. Our mission is the ongoing quest for young fiery spirit in the city of Beethoven’s birthplace – and spreading this spirit around the people.

Since the beginning of the 2017/18 season, the orchestra has begun a new chapter as conductor Dirk Kaftan has assumed the post of the general music director. Along with the musicians, he intends to discover soundscapes on the highest artistic level – whether the music is 300 years old, was composed in Beethoven’s era or is contemporary music, regardless if the music originates from cultures which require traveling around the globe or wandering through unexplored territory. Our primary objective is to fasten the orchestra in the hearts and the souls of the people of Bonn and far beyond the boundaries of the city and the region.

Exceptional concert projects like the Bonner Hofkapelle, the work with international artists like Vadim Gluzman, Martin Grubinger or Lucienne Renaudin and diverse awarded recordings such as the opera Der Golem by
Eugen d’Albert and Maurice Ravels Daphnis et Chloé as well as Franz Schreker’s “Irrelohe” or the recently awarded CD with Dirk Kaftan dedicated to Egmont by Ludwig van Beethoven (OPUS KLASSIK 2020) have testified the outstanding artistic work of the orchestra up to the present day. The dedication to the orchestra’s educational program for young people (OpenPhil or b+) and interculturall projects with Brings or the Nouruz-Ensemble has been cheered by the audience.

The history of the Beethoven Orchester Bonn goes back to the year of 1907, when Beethoven’s birth place received its own orchestra once again, after the former court orchestra had been closed back in 1794. Prominent conductors such as Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Volker Wangenheim, Dennis
Russell Davies, and Kurt Masur have established the orchestra as one of the most renowned sym-phonic ensembles of its kind in Germany. Over the past few years, the Swiss conductor Stefan Blunier (2008 – 2016) and Christof Perick (2016 – 2017) have lead the orchestra and determined its artistic fate.

Tours around Europe, North America, Japan, and China have helped carrying the excellent reputation of the Beethoven Orchester Bonn into the world.

On February 27, 2021, Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), appointed the Beethoven Orchester Bonn as a „United Nations Climate Change Goodwill Ambassador“ at the Deutsche Telekom AG Group Headquarters in Bonn. The orchestra sees the award as an opportunity to take responsibility for the United Nations‘ Agenda 2030, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals to promote peace and protect our planet.