History

Hitzacker Summer Music Festival − Germany´s oldest chamber music festival

1945. Before the War, Hitzacker had been a little town on the Elbe River where about 2.000 people lived. In 1945 its population was doubled by a stream of refugees from the East. Among them were a number of musicians who wasted no time getting down to serious performance here. In the summer of 1946, there were concerts in private homes and in churches and then the first Hitzacker Summer Music Festival. With the dramatic tone of patriotic German dedication to art, its founders aimed at erecting “a stronghold of Germany’s most noble culture, here on free Germany’s border”.

1948. The currency reform almost put an end to this budding enterprise, but Hans Doescher, a cellist from Berlin, stubbornly persisted and planned the third Hitzacker Summer Music Festival. And up until his death in 1971 he served as Artistic Director, giving the festival its unique profile. The presentation of ancient and modern chamber music of great variety has remained a basic festival principle, in spite of numerous shifts in focus. In 1947 Paul Hindemith’s music was on the program, and a year later new compositions were premiered. This was the same year that an historic instrument, the viola da gamba, was heard for the first time in Hitzacker. In 1951, Doescher pushed for the foundation of a “Society of Friends of the Hitzacker Summer Music Festival”, giving the chamber music festival on a solid organizational basis. The Festival had found a home, acceptable at the time, at the ballroom of the Waldfrieden Hotel, which was referred to as the “festival location”. In 1952 the first radio broadcasts were made.

1972. The era of Guenther Weissenborn began, with new accents and more room for music of the 20th century. The festival’s first commission was made in 1973, to Guenter Bialas. A decade later, it was the 21-year-old Wolfgang Rihm’s turn. In 2005 the latter’s pupil, Joerg Widmann, was composer in residence. In 1974, an international composition competition was founded to encourage young composers. Detlev Mueller-Siemens and Michael Denhoff were among the laureates of the first competition. The following year, the festival left the Waldfrieden behind, moving into the larger and more flexible concert hall at Hitzacker’s newly-opened “spa center”. In 1985, his last festival year, Weissenborn invited Rudolf Kelterborn to be composer in residence. In the following years, such international stars as Isang Yun, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina and Krzysztof Penderecki composed in and for Hitzacker. The encouragement of young music, but also of young musicians were high on the festival’s agenda. Among those who profited from performances in Hitzacker were Evgeni Koroliov, Sabine Meyer, the Trio Fontenay and the Amadeus and Auryn Quartets.

1987. After one year with Eduard Brunner, Wolfgang Boettcher was appointed Artistic Director, a position he served in for six years. His aim was the implementation of a broader concept of what chamber music is, including works from the present and the past as far back as the Middle Ages. Hitzacker, not all that far from Hamburg, was an early site of performances by chamber orchestras and productions of chamber operas, ranging from Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” (1955) to Stravinsky’s “The Soldiers Tale”. The Deutsche Grammaphon recorded the “Orfeo” production, which made a considerable contribution to Hitzacker’s notoriety. The music of Jewish composers and others who were subject to Nazi persecution was brought back to life here. “Moonlight Concerts” provided relaxing entertainment.

1993. By the time Claus Kanngiesser became Artistic Director the Hitzacker Summer Music Festival had quite a tradition to be nurtured and developed. “Neighboring arts” such as dance, jazz, literature and visual arts were stressed, as was a dedication to bringing artists and audiences closer together, something that the setting in Hitzacker had made a specific aspect of the festival from the very beginning.

2002. The young musicologist and cultural scientist Dr. Markus Fein was the first Artistic Director who is not a performer. This decision turned out to be right on the spot. Dr. Fein nurtured Hitzacker’s traditions and, at the same time, invented new highlights. The Audience Academy, a program that combines the experience of music with an understanding of what one is listening to has become a trademark of the Hitzacker Summer Music Festival. The same is true of various programs aimed a younger audiences, especially the “Youth Academy”. And as more and more large and small festivals came onto the market, Hitzacker was compelled to sharpen its profile. This process led to programming which makes every concert part of a larger thematic composition, something unique to Hitzacker. The audiences are just as enthusiastic about this as the musicians are. In the words of the “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik’s” critic in 2005: “The oldest German chamber music festival … a greenhouse for innovative concepts and daring impulses that reach into the future”. 2011 is Dr. Fein’s last year in Hitzacker. His successor has been announced:

2012. Carolin Widmann. We look forward to the continuing story of the Hitzacker Summer Music Festival in the spirit of quality, innovation and respect for tradition.