Due to the CSD weekend, there will be extensive road closures and traffic disruption in Cologne city centre. We therefore recommend that you allow plenty of time for your journey to the Cologne Philharmonic Hall and, where possible, use public transport.

Please note that the Deutzer Bridge is closed to traffic heading towards the city centre. Furthermore, from around 1.30 pm on Sunday, Cologne Central Station will only be accessible via Breslauer Platz.

Chaos, catcalls, enraged heckling, even brawling: when Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) was first performed in Paris in 1913, it caused an outraged scandal. Was it even music, this stomping, orgiastic, almost obscene sensuality? Not to mention the subject: a heathen ritual celebrating spring and fertility, even including the sacrifice of a virgin. Shocking! Often, however, the highest waves are quickest to be smothered. Only a short while thereafter, it became clear what Stravinsky had propelled onto the stage with incredible force: a piece like a tornado, throwing open the gates of modernism as few others in the orchestral literature ever had – possibly even enabling it to open at all.

Learn more about our Composer in Residence Thomas Adès