Intimate Salon Concerts, a taster for the Schumannfest

"I will allow myself to be intoxicated by the power of my feelings"

I'm often asked about secret spots in city, places no one knows about where extraordinary things take place ....

Valentin Radutiu in the salon of Rosenstrasse 49, Pempelfort
photo @Susanne Diesner

It's true, the Altstadt is very a huge part of life in Düsseldorf and it's easy to hang out there and never venture further afield, but if you do scratch the surface, do a little research, there are some absolute treasures this city has to discover! Yes, some behind otherwise 'closed' doors ....

The theme of the bi-annual Schmannfest 'Get Romantic' isn't about hearts and roses, it's about taking time and creating peace, allowing your senses to be tickled, inspired ... it's a time to escape from the hustle and bustle of industry and commerce. To sink into another world.


Along the theme of historical ninetieth century 'Salon Concerts' when Chopin and Liszt entertained the gentry in grand city palaces a created a place were politics and philosophy were discussed with musicians and writers, a series of very intimate concerts are being played in exceptional locations in the city in the lead up to the Schumannfest.


The first will be a grand city house in the Rosenstrasse in Pempelfort near the Hofgarten. The owners, a musician and dramatist, have kindly opened their beautiful home to host a recital for cello and piano with Valentin Radutiu and Per Rundberg.

Cellist Valentin Radutiu talked of how very special such a performance is, that a concert hall full of 1000 guests can be most powerful but one can also sometimes lose the sensual feeling of the music connecting with your audience. He was obviously looking forward to this salon concert on May 19 immensely.

Call the ticket hotline now, 0211 13 32 40, and reserve one of the very limited tickets for one of these very special concerts. Tickets for the recital in the Rosenstrasse are just €19.00. Certainly one of a kind and certainly an experience that will stay with you for quite some time.

There will be four Düsseldorfer Salons concerts, please see link for details.

RhineBuzz Special for the Schumannfest!

Win RhineBuzz tickets for the upcoming Schumannfest or purchase tickets to three different concerts at special group prices!


This festival is a real gem.
It's not the easiest to communicate, so courageous is the concept, but having researched what will be happening from May 24 to June 4 2012, I can only urge you all to study the varied programme, google the artists and you will be astounded to see the wonderful celebration of the forward-thinking Robert Schumann that Michael Becker has put together.


The glamourous and critically-acclaimed Katia and Marielle Labèque have performed with many of the world's greatest musicians; we are extremely fortunate that Michael Becker has invited them to the upcoming Schumannfest. 


We have a very limited number of discounted tickets, in excellent seats, for what promises to be an intriguing concert in the Tonhalle on May 29. Katia and Marielle Labèque have collaborated with award-winning film maker Tal Rosner, (whose recent work has taken him to London and work with the Pet Shop Boys), to create "A Video for Schumann", a concert for the eyes and ears in our city's stunning "planetarium of music."
We also have discounted tickets for the opening concert, 'A Transatlantic Celebratory Overture', on May 24 at the Tonhalle with Emerson String Quartet and for Tzimon Barto at the Robert Schumann hall on May 25.
Email schumann@rhinebuzz.com for details.





You can also win tickets to Help! Beatles and Schumann, with Katia Labèque and the charmingly quirky Nadeh.





To win, take a look at the programme for Help! and name us three of the Beatles' songs to be performed on May 31 at the Tonhalle.
Email answers to: win@rhinebuzz.com - first correct answer wins two tickets!


And if you are not lucky this time - we have more tickets to win, and discounted tickets for two more concerts .... watch this space!


RhineBuzz facebook admins may not take part - sorry!

White Horse Theatre presents The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew      

by 

William Shakespeare 

reduced and simplified by The White Horse Theatre

on May 4 at 7pm

at the Weiterbildungszentrum, Hall 1,

Bertha-von-Sutner Platz,

Düsseldorf

behind the main station


€7.00 - just turn up!

Petition to help save the Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Massive financial cuts threaten the Deutsche Oper am Rhein!

Please sign the online petition: 

http://www.operamrhein.de/petition/en_EN in aid of the preservation of cultural life in Duisburg, partner city of the German Opera of the Rhine Düsseldorf - Duisburg.

We need as much support as we can get and would very grateful if you could distribute the petition nationally and internationally. 

Many thanks for your support!

SingPause Benefit Concert May 3 at the Tonhalle

  

One of my most favourite people in the city just has to be Manfred Hill.
I met him at the Tonhalle at the benefit concert for Japan after the catastrophe in the spring of last year. He immediately offered his help with the preparation for the 'We Love Music' tour in a most generous and uncomplicated way. This man knows so very much about the music history of the city, he just astounds me!


Being chairman of the Städtische Musikverein, one of the world's oldest choirs and music organisations, just isn't enough for Manfred Hill! In 2006, he initiated the project SingPause, bringing the joy of singing to primary school children and providing them with much-valued musical education. Currently 54 primary schools take part in SingPause, this means some 11,000 children of the first to fourth grades receive hands-on musical education for 20 minutes twice a week. The young people learn a new song in a different language every month, so at the end of the four years they know 48 songs in a variety of tongues and rhythms.


SingPause is financed to two thirds by the city and one third by donations and sponsorship. Established music teachers are especially trained in the 'Ward method' and then they rotate around the numerous schools.
It costs just €50 a year for one child to be able to take part in this fabulous gift of music. 


Music, which not only brings such happiness, but it is also encourages an enormous feeling of togetherness. Teachers experience a more harmonious class, learning flows much easier, each child gains a real sense of achievement as no one is told 'you can't sing' and the pride felt in taking part in the concerts that happen throughout the year in the Tonhalle delight not only the young singers but of course their family and friends too.
It's a gift for life.


On May 3 at 8pm award-winning Martin Stadtfeld will be giving a benefit concert in the Tonhalle along with a children of the SingPause and the Orchestra of the Landesregierung Düsseldorf.
Martin Stadtfeld is an obvious choice of a benefit concert to be involved in; he strongly believes in the benefits of the involvement in music for children, especially as this is open to all children, not only those whose parents encourage musical education but those who may, quite simply without SingPause, might possibly miss out.
A musical grounding brings so many advantages in later life.


Tickets €25 - 45.00 are available by:
emailing konzertkasse@tonhalle.de, calling 0211 89 96 123 or from the box office at the Tonhalle.
Please join us not only for a spectacular concert but also be part of something valuable in your city for now and for the future.


To Manfred Hill and his team of volunteers who tirelessly raise money to train new teachers and put them into our schools, you deserve to be so very proud.

Martin Stadtfeld

The concert programme includes:

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Variations sérieuses op. 54 

Antonin Dvorak Concert for piano and orchestra op. 33

Tonhalle 
Ehrenhof 1
40479 Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf Night of Museums

This Saturday the city's museums open their doors until the wee hours when you can explore each and every one of some 40 galleries, museums and arts spaces that make up the rich cultural landscape of Düsseldorf.


The Düsseldorf Night of Museums is a feast for all senses. For just €12.00 you not only have entry to all participating houses but you can take advantage of the complimentary shuttle busses that take you to all corners of the city to the various museums and galleries, many of which are open until 2am.
There will be many special events, films, performances and music. You can check out what is happening here.
The city takes on an even bigger festive atmosphere than usual, if you are new in town it's a really great way to get a feel for the city and so much of what it has to offer.


The ticket can be purchased in advance at many museums and galleries and ticket agencies.


Highlight has to be the public opening of El Greco at Museum Kunstpalast, RhineBuzz has been fortunate enough to be able to take a peek as the show is going up ... this much-anticipated exhibition will attract huge crowds on Saturday night but it will certainly be worth the wait to get in!

MKP Director Beat Wismer prepares for an interview as the
El Greco exhibition takes shape
©Bernd Ahrens Photography

Booklets of the programme can currently be picked up all over town in cafés, stores and the tourist information.

Jan Lisiecki at the Tonhalle

photo @Windsor Star

Described by BBC Music Magazine as “perhaps the most ‘complete’ pianist of his age, Canadian Jan Lisiecki is an exceptional young musician. 

At just 15 years of age Jan Lisiecki signed with Deutsche Grammophone. His biography, though short in years is already packed with highlights other musicians can take a lifetime to achieve, if at all.

In 2008 he was made a national Youth Representative by UNICEF Canada.

Come and experience the poetic playing of this young man yourself when the Tonhalle hosts a solo with Jan Lisiecki in the Helmut-Hentrich-Hall on Saturday April 21 at 6.30pm. Tickets available from the Tonhalle.

The programme  will include Bach, Beethoven, Litszt and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy.

One of the most feel-good quotes I’ve read in a long time from Jan’s website, quotes from the audience: 

I just watched a documentary on CBC about your accomplishments while flying back home from Afghanistan and it was quite inspiring. I was there for the past four months flying the Chinook helicopter for the Canadian Air Force.

Your story gave me the bug to learn how to play the piano. Thanks,

Jason Arthur

Tickets, €18.00 available online here

Tonhalle Helmut-Hentrich-Saal

Ehrenhof 1

 40479 Düsseldorf

Many thanks to the Tonhalle for sponsoring two tickets for this concert for the English ‘We Love Music’ tour on April 7th along with two tickets for the Sternzeichen 10 concert on April 20.

We are fortunate in that we often have wonderful tickets to give away on this tour to all kinds of events and concerts, next public tour in German May 5. Info here. Public tour in English on request, email tours@rhinebuzz.com

Setting up a Business in Düsseldorf

One in ten entrepreneurs in Germany is not of German origin, the prosperous city of Düsseldorf especially is a very attractive location for new businesses. If you are thinking of turning your own idea into a business, the City's Office of Economic Development offer a whole package of services to help you on your way.


Begin with this free one day workshop in English in conjunction with 1a Startup,  I've heard good things about the workshops last year, these are the dates for 2012:

17 April 2012
03 July 2012
18 September 2012
20 November 2012


Registration is necessary, places are limited.
You can download the application form here as a pdf.

Contact and registration

City of Düsseldorf 

Office of Economic Development 

Monika Bosbach phone: 

+49 (0)211.89-9 58 92 

fax: +49 (0)211.89-3 99 92 

email: monika.bosbach@duesseldorf.de

Seminar Location

German RTM GmbH

Hansaallee 159

40549 Düsseldorf

Nadège Rochat & Rafael Aguirre Play Carnegie Hall

When I created RhineBuzz, the idea was to help those who spoke little or no German discover what is happening on the arts and culture scene in and around Düsseldorf. I had no inkling that RhineBuzz would become a melting pot of great talent and creativity.

The community comes up with gems and surprises for me again and again as we seem to attract the creme dé la creme in terms of the creative and gifted characters that form the international community of our area.

It was last summer when my Spanish friends Rafael Aguirre Miñarro and Luis Regidor told me a of a young musician they had met in Cologne. “You have to meet her Caroline - she’s so .... incredible!”

So now I have met Swiss cellist Nadège Rochat, and yes, she is quite something.

Just from the videos that I have seen so far she is a indeed a musical gem, meet her personally and she is self assured and absolutely enchanting.

I’ve yet to hear her play, but seeing her on film and catching the spark in my friends’ eyes tell me that the first concert of hers that I will experience will be quite, quite memorable and that, in so many more ways than one.

For Rafael Miñarro Aguirre, described as ‘The perfect guitarist’ by Akustik Guitarre Magazine and the winner of more awards for guitar than any other Spaniard, and award-winning Nadège Rochat are playing Carnegie Hall in New York City on March 14 2012.

I will be there in the audience, along with Luis Regidor, for what promises to be a wonderful evening of music and friends in the most exciting city in the world!

So, although this isn’t a piece about what’s actually happening in and around Düsseldorf, how could I not share what is being created here in our city and reaching the far corners of our globe?

I asked Rafa and Nadège about how they feel about playing such a legendary venue, this is what they told me:

Nadège: It's the third generation, in my family, that almost everybody plays music and the dream of each musician in the world is to play once in the Carnegie Hall, so I am very very happy to share the emotion of my first concert there with the few of them who will come to New-York to support me. 

Rafael: For me it means that I will try to collect my best feelings during the next days and then try to make everybody in NY happy, helped and surrounded by the amazing acoustics and atmoshere that the legendary hall has. It is quite a thing!

Luis, who won second place at the Shure Competition for Voice at the Montreaux Jazz Fesival last summer will be playing numerous sessions in New York this coming week and to his great delight he has been accepted to take part in a masterclass with Grammy winning Kurt Elling.

For a chance to see Luis in action in our own city, he will be playing at the Jazz Rally in May. Details to follow.

In the meantime I look forward to hitting the Big Apple with these extraordinary young people.

"We Love Music" the Tour

Tim D. Morand and I at the Kriwet Exhibition at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf

©Manfred Schmidt, Düsseldorf


Eurovision might be over, but these tours can still be booked - 
please enquire to tours@rhinebuzz.com for details


Four Fixed public dates, in German, with surprise guests and concert tickets to win:
Saturday at 3pm from the Tourist Info Altstadt:


The tour will take place every first Saturday of the month
Next date May 5 with very special guests from UK!


This is how the tour began in Spring 2011:

The musical force of Düsseldorf is extraordinary, with protagonists such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Kraftwerk and the Toten Hosen weaving its rich and influential history.

******************

Next week Tim D. Morand and I begin giving the first "We Love Music" - the ideal tour for the Eurovision Song Contest, when media eyes and Eurovision fans from all around the world will be focused on the city for this great musical event!

Düsseldorf Marketing and Tourism are offering 9 tours to the public in German and 9 in English from April 28 - May 14. All begin at 5pm and last 90 mins. They can be booked online here or at one of the DMT shops in town or at the main station.

I was commissioned by the DMT to write two new tours for the city, "Arts in Düsseldorf" and "We Love Music", so the last couple of months have been a frenzy of interviewing and getting to know so many people and institutions for these beguiling projects. 

The doors that have opened for me have been a real delight to enter and although combined with all the other stuff I have been asked to get involved with for Eurovision it's all been, and still is a huge amount of work, I'm really honoured to have been asked to take this on.
Added to this I've been putting together two ESC Shows for the BBC. One for national Radio Two, the Ken Bruce show and then also for BBC Radio Berkshire, The Andrew Peach Breakfast Show.

For the last few weeks I have already been accompanying the first of the 2,500 foreign journalists expected around the city for ESC, using much of the material from these two tours for the press work. The response has been very good, the press have left not with one mainstream article about the city as host to ESC but with enough material and ideas for several cultural pieces on the city. They discovered a hub of arts and music that they simply didn't know existed!

Talking new painting and new music with Emil Schult

A very special visit to the Krypta at the Robert Schumann School of Music which
 Emil Schult decorated, an absolute "insiders tip" in Düsseldorf

Tim and I crawled around 22 metres up high in the dome of the Tonhalle with sound engineer Andreas Kainz to understand how the Tonhalle actually works!

VIP Shuttle for Scottish journalist Lillian McDowall

To all those that invited me into their studios, homes and party basements :), thank you; for the phone numbers that have been passed onto me; the contacts that have generously been shared; for the time you have given me, thank you. And most of all for the trust and the smiles.

So, with all my heart, my thanks go to: Monique Maasen, Michael Schnitzler, Tanja Brill and Wilfried Schmerbach, Emil Schult, Christiane Oxenfort, Henry Storch, Meike Knoche and Andreas Kainz, Phillipp Maiburg, Christian Banasik, Rafael Minarro, Alvero Mendizabal, Luis Redigor, Vom Ritchie and JKP GmbH Management, Professor Hermann-Josef Kuhna, Daniel Fiene, Felicitas Hackmann, Manfred Schmidt, Marina Schuster, Dirk Schewe, Alexandra Iwan, Monika and Eckard Günnewig, ISR, Peter Rewald, Michael Sonneck, Susan Jones, Manfred Hill, Helma Kremer, Steffi Herbrich and Kristin Schröter

and to all the fans, music enthusiasts and numerous others who have spoken to us and shared their work and memories.

Thanks to Tim. You have taken on the challenge of working with me admirably 

and are doing a fantastic job!

Strobe lighting at the recent Creamcheese Revival Party. Creamcheese probably showed Germany's first strobe lightning in the 1960s

No doubt after Eurovision these tours will continue, we have mountains of material to share with you and delicious morsels of musical surprises for the tours. Other subjects are in the planning, and we do realise that we will have to offer them at a later time. I've already received numerous emails saying that the time is too early. But the RhineBuzz community have been asking me to begin tours again for a while now and so here we are, it's a great start!


Tim and I have thoroughly enjoyed the research and the music for these tours and we are looking forward to the next few weeks, the run up to Eurovision and all the city events that will be going on enormously!

Come join the party!