The 2002 International Beethoven Festival Bonn "You have not lost him, you have won him." The 2002 International Beethoven Festival (Internationale Beethovenfeste Bonn) is of special importance: it commemorates the 175th anniversary of Beethoven's death on 26 March 1827. From 7 September to 6 October 2002 the Festival will offer a program that underscores the composer’s unabated impact to the present day. "You have not lost him, you have won him": these words, spoken by Franz Grillparzer at Beethoven's funeral in 1827, form the special theme of this year's Festival. Beethoven's music will be treated as a living legacy that calls out for ever-more and ever-new interpretations. The focus of the program, apart from the many Beethoven compositions, will therefore fall on world premières of works composed by four leading contemporary composers who look to Beethoven's work and spirit for their inspiration. The Festival has commissioned these works with financial support from the North Rhine-Westphalian Foundation for Art and Culture. For the opening concert the French composer Pascal Dusapin has created a Concerto for Piano and Orchestra that will be premièred on 7 September by the British pianist Ian Pace and the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. Also for the Festival, two German composers, Jürg Baur and Manfred Trojahn, have set poems to music for solo voice and orchestra. Baur has created a cycle of songs on poems by Paul Celan; the première, with Christian Gerhaher taking the baritone solo, will be given on 27 September by the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra of Cologne conducted by Manfred Honeck. Poems by Michelangelo form the basis of Trojahn's song cycle, which will be presented on 3 October by the tenor Rainer Trost and the German Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra of Bremen conducted by Daniel Harding. The cycle will contrast with Trojahn’s own arrangements for voice and orchestra of Beethoven's Five Italian Romances. The Spanish composer Mauricio Sotelo was the only composer to turn the Festival's commission into a piece of chamber music. The première performance of his First String Quartet, Degli Eroici Furori, will be given by the Artemis Quartet on 24 September, in the company of string quartets by Mozart and Beethoven. "With these four premières," claims the Festival's director Franz Willnauer, "our festival sets a visible example that Beethoven's creative genius was not buried beneath his glory but is still a challenge today, 175 years after his death." Another main emphasis of this year's Festival is the large number of up-and-coming musicians who must prove their mettle by playing with prominent ensembles and international stars. To make this point plain, these young artists are scheduled to perform in the first part of the Festival. Projects devoted to these gifted young performers include a complete cycle of the thirty-two piano sonatas performed by eight winners of international piano competitions (10-13 and 17-20 September) and a guest appearance of the National Conservatory Orchestra of Istanbul University (15 September). Moreover, musicians from some thirty countries will step onto the stage of Beethoven Hall when Helmuth Rilling gives a concert performance of Beethoven's opera Fidelio with the chorus and orchestra of the European Music Festival, Stuttgart, and an ensemble of renowned singers (14 September). The highlights of the 2002 program include guest performances from the Orchestre de Paris conducted by Christoph Eschenbach (7 September), the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta (29 September) and the Dresden Staatskapelle conducted by Bernard Haitink (5 October). Beethoven's anniversary year will be commemorated in particular by the above-mentioned concert performance of Fidelio by Helmuth Rilling (14 September) and the Missa solemnis conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner (21 September). The Beethoven Hall Orchestra will contribute a concert conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki (8 September) as well as a performance of Robert Schumann's oratorio Paradise and the Peri (6 October). Leading soloists appearing at the 2002 Festival include the cellist David Geringas (7 September), the pianist Yefim Bronfman (29 September) and the violinist Frank-Peter Zimmermann (5 October). Visitors can especially look forward to a piano recital by Martha Argerich, who will play works by Mozart, Brahms and Messiaen together with Alexandre Rabinovich (1 October), and two violin recitals with Dmitry Sitkovetsky, who will contrast four Beethoven violin sonatas with Russian and Czech violin literature of the twentieth century (27 and 29 September). Chamber music forms a significant part of this year's festival. Important artists and ensembles were engaged to take part in thematic projects. On five evenings the Chamber Music Hall at the Bonn Beethoven House will witness performances by the Artemis Quartet, the Juilliard Quartet and the young Casal Quartet. These groups will present the whole of Beethoven's late string quartets, thus paving the way for a highly interesting dialogue between these decisive works and contemporary quartet compositions by Nono, Tippett and Schuller. The famous British accompanist and piano teacher Irwin Gage has arranged three lieder recitals for himself and his friends especially for the Festival. They will perform art songs and folk songs from every region of Europe, the range of composers extending from Beethoven to Shostakovich (4-6 September). On the whole, the 2002 Beethoven Festival will present fifty concerts over twenty-eight days in Bonn and nine other venues in the region. The program includes eleven concerts in Beethoven Hall and no fewer than seventeen chamber music recitals at the Bonn Beethoven House. This year, concerts will also be given in such picturesque places as Namedy Castle, Birlinghoven Castle and, for the first time, Wissem Castle in Troisdorf. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, Beethoven will also have to submit to an amusing examination. The Bach, Blech & Blues ensemble has taken its inspiration from, among other things, Beethoven's Leonore Overture (21-22 September). In a family concert with the motto "Thunder and Lightning,” Herbert Feuerstein and the Beethoven Hall Orchestra with Marc Soustrot will lead music-lovers young and old through a musical thunderstorm ranging from Beethoven's Pastoral to Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony (22 September). Franz Willnauer, the director of the Beethoven Festival, hopes that this year's event will be a great success: "It's not only the 175th anniversary of our namesake and the impressive concerts that will attract music-lovers from far and near. It's also the carefully balanced program, ranging from towering classical masterpieces to attractive novelties, as well as the many prominent artists and promising young talents. This, and not least of all the simplified structure of the four-week series, leads me be believe that we will see full houses and enthusiastic audiences." As in previous years, the events of the Beethoven Festival will be broadcast throughout the entire world. West German Radio, DeutschlandRadio and Deutsche Welle have agreed to transmit more than half of the concerts in their programs. The Deutsche Welle alone will broadcast eight concerts to 140 countries. For further information please visit our homepage www.beethovenfest-bonn.de or call us +49(0)228-20103-40. Advance ticket sales began on 8 April.