Music in Leipzig and its surrounding region

Leipzig, where music sets the tone.

You can feel the fascinating power of music everywhere in Leipzig – in the streets and squares, in churches, concert halls and the many authentic locations where famous musicians worked and lived. And there is a long tradition: In past centuries, more than 500 composers lived here, including great names from music history: Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Clara und Robert Schumann as well as Richard Wagner, Edvard Grieg, Albert Lortzing, Gustav Mahler and Hanns Eisler.

The rich musical heritage also includes the Gewandhausorchester and the world-famous St. Thomas Boys Choir. And of course, let's not forget: Leipzig Opera, which has always been committed to Wagner's legacy and numbers amongst the oldest civic music theatre stages in Europe.

But Leipzig does not only have a great musical history. Here the tradition is still alive. The city honours its musicians annually with high-profile festivals that thrill guests from all over the world. Leipzig's record-breaking calendar of musical events ensures the city will always be an attractive destination for classical music fans.

Mahler-Festival 2023: 11 –29 May 2023
Leipzig Bachfest 2023: 8 – 18 June 2023
Mendelssohn Festival: 29 October – 5 November 2023
Opera festival: summer 2024

Follow in the musical footsteps of the world's greatest composers and discover the City of Music: Leipzig.

Flyer "City of music :Leipzig"

Prospectus "Ville musicale :Leipzig"

City of Music :Leipzig - Travel Offers

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”Oh, how I envy Leipzig for its music.“

– Clara Schumann

City of Music :Leipzig

Leipzig Opera Festival Gewandhaus Festival Bach Festival Leipzig Mendelssohn Festival Leipzig

Gewandhaus Festival Leipzig

Mahler Festival 2023

11–29 May 2023

In May 2023, the Leipzig Gewandhaus will be entirely dedicated to Gustav Mahler. The time Gustav Mahler spent in Leipzig had a huge impact on his artistic work. He evolved from a hard-working conductor to an internationally renowned composer. This development is attributed to Leipzig.

A unique programme: all his symphonies as well as other orchestral works will be performed by ten world-class orchestras in 19 days in the city where Mahler became a symphonic composer. From 1886 to 1888, Mahler spent two pivotal years of his life in Leipzig, during which he set the course for his further career. Leipzig and the Gewandhausorchester guarantee an authentic atmosphere. Twelve years after the first Mahler Festival in 2011, Europe's top orchestras will once again present their individual interpretations of Mahler's symphonic universe of sound. Alongside Gewandhausorchester concerts conducted by Gewandhaus Musical Director Andris Nelsons, the programme includes performances by the Munich Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Individual tickets have been on sale since November 2021.

Mahler Festival

More information

The appointed Gewandhaus conductor at a big Gewandhaus orchestra concert at Leipzig's Gewandhaus on Augustusplatz in the City of Music, cultural venue, sights

View of Leipzig Gewandhaus next to the Mende Fountain and City Tower on Augustusplatz in the City of Music, cultural institution, sightseeing, Gewandhausorchester

Etching of composer Gustav Mahler, who worked in Leipzig, City of Music, culture

Leipzig Bachfest 2023

8–18 June 2023

Here, a picture can be seen of the Bach Archive Leipzig from the outside, over it the white Bach Archiv Leipzig writing together with its emblem.

Every year in June, the city of Leipzig honours its important Thomas Cantor Johann Sebastian Bach with the Bach Festival. It pursues a tradition of honouring Bach which was originally initiated by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.

Leipzig Bachfest 2023 »BACH for Future«

The Bachfest Leipzig 2023 will focus on the 300th anniversary of Bach's appointment as Thomaskantor. Under the motto "BACH for Future", Bach's masterpieces will be presented in new, exciting contexts. The crème de la crème of Bach interpreters will be joined by young ensembles.

In the 2024 season, Leipzig will celebrate - after 2022 - part 2 of the Bachfest under the motto "BACH - We Are Family". Once again, numerous Bach choirs from all over the world will travel to the city in order to commemorate the composer in the place where their idol lived and worked – following in the footsteps of the many branches of the Bach family of musicians, who in the 17th and 18th centuries used to meet once a year to make music together. At various Chorale Cantata concerts, the audience is expressly encouraged to join in and thus become part of today’s global Bach family.

Bach Festival Leipzig

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Bach Festival Leipzig, concert venues

Bach Festival Leipzig, dates

8–18 June 2023
7–16 June 2024
13–22 June 2025

First Leipzig Bachfest

Interior view of St. Nicholas Church during a Bach Festival Leipzig concert in the City of Music, cultural venue, sightseeing — St. Nicholas Church with its architecturally impressive interior is just one of many venues for the Bach Festival, as well as an important site of the Peaceful Revolution.

The first Leipzig Bachfest took place in 1908. It was organized for the unveiling of the "New Bach Monument".

Selected pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach are performed at the festival. Bach lived and worked in Leipzig as the Thomas Cantor at St. Thomas Church from 1723 to his death in 1750.

Around 100 different events take place every year as part of the Leipzig Bachfest.

Bach Competition

The Johann Sebastian Bach competition is a globally significant event for young musicians launched in 1950. Since 1996, it has been taking place every other year in June in three alternating subjects: piano, harpsichord and Violin.

The competition is open to instrumentalists and singers between the ages of 16 and 33.

Broadcast: Reiselust (Travel Favourites)

Prof Dr Michael Maul, Artistic Director of the Bach Festival Leipzig, talking to Klassik Radio (Excerpt from the "Reiselust" programme broadcast on 26.09.2021)

klassikradio.de

Podcast Tip

Bach's Cantatas with Maul & Schrammek / mdr Klassik

This podcast by Prof. Michael Maul, Artistic Director of the Bach Festival Leipzig together with the musicologist Bernhard Schrammek, is devoted to the sacred cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Link to the podcast

Mendelssohn Festival Leipzig

The festival is a cooperation between the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Mendelssohn House

29 October to 5 November 2023

The memory of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is very much alive in Leipzig: Traditionally, the city honours the composer and musician every year with various concerts around 4 November on Mendelssohn Day, the anniversary of his death. Since 1997, he has also been honoured by the Mendelssohn Festival which took on a new form in 2021 when Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Mendelssohn House began working together to present a varied and sophisticated programme.

In 2023, works by Mendelssohn, Mahler, Beethoven, Bach and Fanny Hensel, among others, will be performed at chamber music and choral concerts, lieder matinees and “Grand Concerts“. Alongside the president of the Felix Mendelssohn
Bartholdy Foundation, Elena Bashkirova, renowned greats such as Sir András Schiff, Magdalena Kožená and Georg Nigl will be performing.

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”Mendelssohn was … a brilliant, incredibly versatile, European and modern-thinking man. Here is the place where you can feel all this.“

Patrick Schmeing, Mendelssohn House Director

Broadcast: Travel Favourites

Patrick Schmeing, Mendelssohn House Director talking to Klassik Radio (Excerpt from the "Reiselust" (travel favourites) programme broadcast on 26.09.2021)

klassikradio.de

Leipzig Opera Festival

Festival with focus on dance at Oper Leipzig

View of the illuminated Leipzig Opera behind the fountain at Augustusplatz with yellow flags at the Opera heralding the Wagner Festival in Leipzig, City of Music.

Summer 2024

With its more than 325-year tradition, Oper Leipzig is one of the flagships of Leipzig as a city of music. As early as 1693, the first opera house at Brühl was opened as the third civic music theatre in Europe after Venice and Hamburg. Since 1840, the world-renowned Gewandhausorchester has played at all performances of the opera and the Leipzig Ballet. In addition to today’s opera house on Augustusplatz, built in 1960, Oper Leipzig includes the “Musikalische Komödie” in the Lindenau district, a special venue for musicals and operettas. Opera fans love both the exciting productions and the first-class musical standard of the house. The international ballet company of the Oper Leipzig under the direction of ballet director and chief choreographer Mario Schröder also performs at the highest level.

For the current season 2022/23, numerous highlights are on the programme of Oper Leipzig, including premieres such as Verdi's "Otello", "Don Giovanni" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or the romantic magic opera "Undine" by Albert Lortzing.

The next Opera festival under the new General Music Director Tobias Wolff is planned for summer 2024 and will be dedicated to the theme of dance.

Leipzig boasts a worldwide unique concentration of originally preserved places where world famous composers lived and worked. The Leipzig Music Trail has been bringing this musical cultural heritage to life for tourists since 12 May 2012. Since individual points of interest are not far away from one another, they can be comfortably visited on foot. At each point of interest, you can get thrilling insights through musical excerpts and information in both German and English. You can also get the full experience on a unique 360° panorama tour.

The Leipzig Music Trail connects the most important original locations in Leipzig city centre over 5.1 km. Curved steel elements embedded into the ground mark the meandering path through the city centre. You can start and end your tour at any of the points of interest. More athletic music-lovers can discover Leipzig's musical history by bicycle from a completely different fascinating perspective on the Leipzig Music Bike Trail.

Music Trail map P. 14

of Music Trail link up the original musical sites in Leipzig's city centre

are linked via a curved stainless steel band, "intarsia"

is the average distance from one point of interest to the next

of musical history can be discovered over a short distance

Music-Trail-St.-Thomas-Church-Square_City-of-Music-Bach-Monument-St.-Thomas-Church-Leisure-Culture_Philipp-Kirschner_leipzig.travel — Steel band in St. Nicholas Church Square © www.pkfotografie.com, Philipp Kirschner

Additional Musical Highlights

in Leipzig and the region