Dirk Kaftan
Dirk Kaftan was appointed the General Music Director of the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and Bonn Opera House in the summer of 2017. In addition to numerous concerts during the 2022/2023 season, he will also be conducting Kurt Weill's opera “Mahagonny” and Franz Schreker's rarely performed opera “Der singende Teufel” (The Singing Devil). His concerts will see him continue to conduct the successful concert series that have brought him together with artists such as Matthias Brandt and Rafik Schami, and we can also look forward to future projects with guests such as Julia Fischer, Sunnyi Melles, Auma Obama, Selina Ott, Daniel Müller Schott, Alexandre Tharaud and Wladimir Kaminer.
Dirk Kaftan’s repertoire is a broad one and ranges from rapturously received performances of Beethoven’s symphonies to Nono’s “Intolleranza 1960” and “The Merry Widow”, as well as various intercultural projects.
He was the initiator and driving force behind a whole string of projects commemorating the city’s most famous son during the Beethoven Anniversary Year, such as the “Beethoven Lounges”, “Hofkapelle” or “Beethoven Moves!”. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he developed new concert formats, such as “Beethoven Pure”, which allowed Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies to be performed in chamber music formations.
At the beginning of 2021, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn under Dirk Kaftan was appointed as a “United Nations Climate Change Goodwill Ambassador” by the UN Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC). During the summer of the same year, Dirk Kaftan and his Beethoven Orchestra Bonn were awarded the European Culture Prize.
His credos of “approaching people” and “joining forces” are reflected in the work of the Bonn General Music Director, be it in his interactions with musicians or the audience. In the eyes of Dirk Kaftan, music is an essential part of life; it is an invitation to think and get involved.
In the past, the orchestra’s work has been exemplified by extraordinary concert projects and various prize-winning recordings, such as the opera Irrelohe by Franz Schreker. The first joint production of the Beethoven Orchester Bonn with Dirk Kaftan, Beethoven’s Egmont, was highly praised by critics and awarded the OPUS KLASSIK in 2020. In 2021, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn recorded the CD Alles Tutti! together with the Kölsch rock band Brings under the direction of Dirk Kaftan.
The orchestra’s history dates back to 1907, when the Beethoven city got an orchestra again after the dissolution of the court orchestra in 1794. Conductors such as Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Dennis Russell Davies, Marc Soustrot and Kurt Masur established the orchestra in the top class of orchestras in Germany. Since the beginning of the 2017 / 2018 season, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn has been under the direction of Before that, Stefan Blunier and Christof Prick were in charge.
Successful concerts and guest performances far beyond the borders of Germany contributed to the orchestra’s good reputation. During the Corona pandemic, the orchestra musicians were involved in various social areas: they performed concerts in their free time in front of and in senior citizens‘, nursing homes and children’s homes, helped run the Bonn Vaccination Centre and streamed numerous concerts. In addition, various digital formats for children, students and adults were created to bring hope and joy through music during the »shutdowns«.
At the beginning of 2021, the Beethoven Orchestra was appointed as a United Nations Climate Change Goodwill Ambassador by the UN Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC). This enables the orchestra to develop new forms of sustainable cultural work in the spirit of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals together with the Climate Secretariat. In the summer of 2021, the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn was awarded the European Cultural Prize for, among other things, »its participatory concepts and the ambition to set out for new musical shores with the audience and its namesake Beethoven.