Bock auf Klassik?!

A classical concert for young adults – with no dress code, but with everything that makes for a special evening.

With the concert series »Bock auf Klassik?!«, the Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne invites everyone under the age of 29 to an evening that brings classical music to life in a new way: accessible, vibrant and surprisingly different. For just €8, you can enjoy great works, a personal introduction to the evening’s programme, and afterwards a musical finale with a DJ, free drinks and a relaxed atmosphere in the foyer.

He is regarded as the pop star of the organ – dazzling, extravagant, brilliant and incredibly versatile: the American organ virtuoso Cameron Carpenter is one of the leading stars of the international soloist jet set, bringing the organ out of the church and into the concert hall – and has demonstrated over the course of his global career in recent years that the ‘Queen of Instruments’ has a whole other side to her. Carpenter, trained at the renowned Juilliard School in New York and the first organist ever to be nominated for a GRAMMY Award, plays the entire ‘classical’ organ repertoire with consummate skill, yet also has the audience on their feet with pop music arrangements and his own compositions. Organ at its finest – and yet so different, fresh and irresistible. The arrangement of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of the Devil’s Violinist Niccolò Paganini offers the soloist no easy ride. In Camille Saint-Saëns’ Organ Symphony, the sound of more than 5,000 pipes (such is the monumental scale of the organ at the Cologne Philharmonie!) blends with that of the orchestra to create a triumphant apotheosis. The composer wrote of his work: »Here I have given everything I could give … I shall never write anything like this again.« Exactly the right piece, then, for an exceptional artist like Cameron Carpenter.