The Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and what was once founded as a place of learning and training for classical music is now a lively, international space for artistic learning and research - open to diversity, change and new worlds of sound.
With the World | Sound | Festival, we want to make this spirit audible; we do not see music as a closed form, but as a dialogue between cultures, generations and traditions. Our students and teachers come from over 40 nations - they all bring their musical roots, languages and stories with them. This creates a space for exchange and encounters.
On this evening, musical traditions from all over the world come together, with Western art music on an equal footing with Balinese gamelan, Persian ud, Brazilian baroque and Korean pansori. This is not a ‘crossover’, but an audible plea for respect - for one's own and for others. Music as an invitation to listen, to marvel, to pause.
Together with musicians from Hamburg communities and students of the HfMT, a concert of change is created that makes boundaries permeable - between stage and everyday life, origin and present, sound and body. Living musical languages come together - without the pressure to translate, but with genuine mutual interest.
This not only raises the question of how music can sound today - it is also about what we can learn from each other.

(Prof. Dr. Jan Philipp Sprick,
President)

First concert performance of Arnold Schoenberg's "Buch der hängenden Gärten" in China.