Kissinger Sommer
The festival Kissinger Sommer 2024 will take place for the 38th time from June 21 to July 21, 2024. This year the festival's motto “Ich hab noch einen Koffer in…” (I still have a suitcase in...) focuses on Berlin - the capital, city of music, culture and entertainment, whose inhabitants have enjoyed making pilgrimages to Bad Kissingen since the 19th century to find rest and recuperation. The painter Adolph von Menzel and the writer Theodor Fontane were among them, as were Empress Auguste Victoria and Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who moved his seat of government to Kissingen for four weeks "to slim down" a whole 15 times.
Berlin was and is also a place of longing, and not just for the icons Marlene Dietrich and Hildegard Knef, whose song "Ich hab' noch einen Koffer in …" gave the 2024 festival its motto. The city with its eventful history presents itself here with a grandiose musical panorama that spans the brilliant entertainment culture as well as the greatest art - from miniature cabaret chansons to operettas and symphonies.
To this day, Berlin exerts an enormous attraction on world-class artists, and many of them are guests at the Kissinger Sommer this year, as well as three orchestras, two choirs, two opera houses and numerous ensembles from the metropolis. Composers such as C.P.E. Bach, Busoni and Mendelssohn, who lived and worked in Berlin, can be found on the program as well as those who only had professional ties to the capital, including Brahms and Bruckner, Wagner and Strauss, Hindemith and Schönberg.
The Kissinger Sommer stands out its programme with tailor-made, unique concert offers featuring stars, up-and-coming artists and regional cultural institutions – all set in the picturesque flair of a typical Franconian town. With the guidance of artistic director Alexander Steinbeis, the tradition-steeped festival hosts its concerts inseveral architecturally interesting venues:
In addition to the historic Max Littmann Hall, housed in the large-scale Regentenbau and known worldwide for its magnificent acoustics, the impressive Rossini Hall, the neat and beautifully decorated Kurtheater and the revolving orchestra shell facing the Kurgarten will also be used. The programme is complemented by outdoor events that aim to show visitors the beauty of the place, including the extensive Kurgarten, the Saale river run laid out by Balthasar Neumann and also the Rose Garden. Additional venues in other surrounding towns such as the famous monastery Maria Bildhausen in Münnerstadt or the König- Ludwig I.-hall in Bad Brückenau give an insight of the festival’s wide artistic spectrum and its regional surroundings.
Since 2021, Bad Kissingen has been part of the Unesco World Heritage “Great Spa Towns of Europe” together with ten other spa towns – an award that not only honours the past as a social “hotspot” of the 19th century high nobility, but also points to the future. With outstanding artistic guests, numerous important symphony orchestras and exciting new concert formats, the Kissinger Sommer aims to combine both: The splendor and magnificence of the past with current artistic trends. The festival thus invites everyone to visit – young or old, expert or early classical music fan.
