It should come as no surprise that Germany – a land saturated with orchestras and opera houses – should have a vibrant and extensive festival scene. Some of these events can trace their histories far back as the 19th century, while others have their roots in post-war politics. Several also reflect Germany’s dominance in classical music’s history in celebrating the music of great individual composers – including here the Bachfest Leipzig, the Beethovenfest Bonn, and Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival.
Here’s our selection of some of the highlights: a varied overview of what’s on offer, from the large-scale to the intimate, from piano and chamber music festivals to high-profile orchestral and opera showcases. There are events lasting a week or spread out over several months, covering a broad selection of repertoire and covering a wider geographical spread, from east to west, north to south. All boast music-making of the high quality one would expect, though, offering the adventurous music lover rich pickings throughout the festival season.
Bachfest Leipzig
June
For more than a century, Bach festivals of one sort or another have been a regular part of musical life in Leipzig – where the composer worked as Thomaskantor from 1723 until his death in 1750. But the Bachfest Leipzig has become an ever more important fixture in Germany’s musical calendar since it started being organised by the city’s Bach Archive in 1999. Showcasing Leipzig’s Thomaskirche, Nikolaikirche and Gewandhaus as venues, and drawing on the city’s great ensembles – the Gewandhausorchester and the Thomanerchor – as well as invariably an impressive array of ensembles from across Germany, Europe and beyond (the 2024 Festival featured choirs from as far afield as Australia and Paraguy), the festival is an unmissible destination for Bach-lovers from around the globe.
Spannungen Heimbach
June
Founded in 1998 by the locally-born pianist Lars Vogt, every year Spannungen Heimbach brings together a stellar line-up of instrumentalists to perform in the turbine hall of the Jugendstil hydroelectric plant in Heimbach, a small town some 50 kilometers southwest of Cologne. Vogt’s aim with the festival was to “perform chamber music with wonderful colleagues in the idyllic, secluded countryside”, and when Vogt died tragically in 2022, his close friend and musical collaborator Christian Tetzlaff took over, initially for three years, from 2023. The week-long festival features a mixture of festival regulars and high-profile guests and boasts a young artist programme as well as a new works commissioned each year (previous commisionees include Brett Dean, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Olga Neuwirth), while open rehearsals for the evening performances help break down traditional barriers between performers and audience.
Kissinger Sommer
June–July
Founded in 1986 with an initial aim of promoting relations across the Iron Curtain, the Kissinger Sommer has grown into one of Germany’s largest classical music festivals, running for a month every summer in the Bavarian Spa town of Bad Kissingen (located roughly equidistant between Frankfurt and Bayreuth). It reliably attracts some of the biggest names in classical music, with appearances by several visiting orchestras every year as well. But it also has a reputation for featuring contemporary music and launching – or considerably boosting – the careers of younger artists, with the annual Luitpoldpreis (previous recipiants includee Nikolaj Znaider and Igor Levit) and, every autumn, the Kissinger Klavierolymp piano competition.
Rheingau Musik Festival
June–September
The annual Rheingau Musik Festival is Europe’s largest privately-funded music festival, seeing over 170 musical events take place in a variety of venues across the Rheingau and neighbouring regions over the course of more than three months each summer. The festival offers an appealing mix of big names and younger artists, featuring solo recitals, chamber music, orchestral and chorals concerts – as well as jazz and world music – with a theme each year running as a thread through the programme. Among the venues are several cultural landmarks, including Kloster Eberbach, the Kurhaus in Wiesbaden and Johanisberg and Vollrads castles, while the region’s wines (especially its famous Riesling) help maintain a special festival atmophere.
Munich Opera Festival
July
The Munich Opera Festival, which has its roots in a tradition reaching back to 1875, is in many ways just an extension of the Bavarian State Opera’s season. But with Germany’s starriest opera house that amounts to a month-long feast for the opera-lover. The company invariably keeps a new production or two up its sleeve for the festival, while also showcasing new stagings from earlier in the season and selections from its extensive repertoire. With many of the world’s great singers counting Munich as a regular stop in their schedules, the casting can be spectacular, while in the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, the theatre boasts one of the world’s great opera orchestras. Ballet performances and a programme of vocal and chamber recitals complete the tantalising offer.
Bayreuth Festival
July–August
The Bayreuth Festival was conceived and founded by Richard Wagner to showcase his own works in ideal conditions, opening with the first full performance of his Ring cycle 1876. Some century and half later it still retains its power as a site of pilgrimage for Wagnerians, who flock each year to see the Meister’s works performed in the iconic – and still striking – Festspielhaus he built in the small Franconian town. Each year sees a new production of the Ring or one of Wagner’s six other canonical operas (with Rienzi to be added in 2026) performed alongside revivals of previous years’ stagings. The hit rate among recent productions has been moderate, admittedly, but Bayreuth remains one of the most significant – and talked about – fixtures on the musical calendar.
Musikfest Berlin
August–September
Developing out of the Berliner Festwochen (founded 1951) and run as part of the all-embracing Berliner Festspiele, the Musikfest Berlin marks the start of the new concert season every year in the German capital. Based around the Philharmonie, the festival traditionally features not only the season-opening programme of the Berliner Philharmoniker but also performances by other Berlin orchestras and top-flight international ensembles doing the rounds of the major European festivals. There’s usually also a good selection of recitals and chamber concerts, too, while a long-standing focus on contemporary music helps ensure some fascinating, challenging programming, more often than not built around a specific theme or motif.
Beethovenfest Bonn
September–October
The Beethovenfest in Bonn can trace its history as far back as 1845, to festivities celebrating the 75th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in the former West German capital. On that occasion, Liszt appeared as a conductor, and the guests included Queen Victoria and Hector Berlioz. Over 175 years later the Beethovenfest is firmly established as one of Germany’s major festivals, with a programme of some 70 concerts not only in Bonn (where the main concerts take place in the Beethovenhalle) but in the surrounding Rhineland. The festival has professed aims of presenting Beethoven’s works as an “inexaustible powerhouse sparking lively debate” and for promoting contact between stars and young artists. As such, it has enviable track record for uniting innovation and tradition, drawing an impressive roster of international performers and orchestras while benefiting from close collaboration within the city with the Beethoven-Haus, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn and Oper Bonn.
Baden-Baden Easter Festival
April
Though it’s only been in existence since 2013, Baden-Baden’s glamorous Easter Festival hit the ground running, set up by a Berliner Philharmoniker looking for a new Easter home after cutting ties with Salzburg. With an annual opera production as well as orchestral and chamber programmes featuring the orchestra and its members – as well as topflight guests – it’s always proved a mouthwatering prospect for the well-healed music lover, even if the opera productions themselves haven’t reliably matched the impeccable musical standards. And that doesn’t look set to change, even though the Berliner Philharmoniker has announced its departure back to Salzburg after 2025. Replacing them will be the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Klaus Mäkelä and the Mahler Chamber Orchestre with Joana Mallwitz.
Klavierfestival Ruhr
April–July
The Klavierfestival Ruhr is another festival whose reach is geographically and chronologically impressively broad. It spans three months every summer and takes in venues across the Ruhr, Germany’s traditional industrial heartland – with concerts in the halls of Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, Duisburg, and Düsseldorf as well as elsewhere. Based, as the name suggests, around all things piano, it incoporates solo recitals as well as chamber and orchestral concerts, with excursions into jazz too. Under new management since 2023, it continues to present an impressive mixture of established names and rising stars, with different programmatic focuses each year and vibrant education programmes that help cement its importance in the region.
Dresden Music Festival
May–June
Originally founded as a prestige cultural event by East Germany’s communist government, the Dresden Music Festival took place for the first time in 1978. It now enjoys a revitalised profile, however, largely down to its current director, Jan Vogler. The cellist – and former principal cello of the city’s famed Staatskapelle – has been in charge since 2009. With an intriguing theme each year and adventurous programming featuring visiting orchestras and soloists as well as the festival’s own Dresdner Festpielorchester (founded 2012), it’s ow firmly re-established as one of Germany’s – if not Europe’s – most important festivals. Each edition sees well over 60 concerts, held in venues in and around Dresden, including the Frauenkirche, the Semperoper and the recently refurbished Kulturpalast.
