The Kissinger Sommer is turning forty. The festival in the Lower Franconian spa town not only offers high art, it is itself a work of art. Its founding was nothing short of a stroke of genius. The town, located on the »periphery« of the old Federal Republic, needed and wanted summer visitors. Kissingen trusted in the magnetism of great art—and they came: guests who wanted to hear and enjoy music of the highest quality, world-class artists and ensembles whom Dr. Kari Kahl-Wolfsjäger, the founding artistic director, was able to inspire to perform in the enticing ambience of the traditional spa town.
A sense for the spirit of the times
In 1986, hardly anyone would have bet that the inner-German border would only exist for another three years, or that the political bloc formation in Europe would only last another four years. But in Bad Kissingen, people had an antenna for the signs of the times. They made music from Eastern European countries the theme: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland—countries that had been part of the Central European cultural area until 1939. Contacts were established, connections were revived that had once given the Old Continent its cultural vitality. Against the backdrop of history, the existing power confrontations seemed to have fallen out of time. The festival has retained its broad perspective to this day: with the repertoire it presents, with the program focuses it sets, but above all through the nature of its concrete design. The most diverse art forms, from subtle and exclusive chamber music and sensitive song art to grand symphonies and theater events to the many facets of modern and timeless entertainment culture, come together here in stimulating coexistence. At a time when there is much talk of social divisions of all kinds, such open and inspiring cooperation can set an example. We do not need new boundaries, not even in art – we need what Ludwig van Beethoven once expressed so eloquently: »Only freedom, only progress is the purpose in art as in all creation.«
The Kissinger Sommer festival is using its own anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on the Jewish contribution to the history of the city and to the culture that is cultivated here.
Celebrating with the greatest artists
Forty years of Kissinger Sommer are being celebrated with an event that brings together top-class artistic work and work for the general public: Orff's »Carmina Burana« under Sir Simon Rattle features not only professionals but also ambitious choristers. The great orchestras that have helped shape Kissinger Sommer over the years will also be returning in 2026: the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a regular participant for many years, the leading orchestras from Munich and Berlin, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra. The latter were once pitted against each other as representatives of opposing systems: the Bamberg orchestra was founded by exiled musicians from Prague as a showcase of the free world against communist artistic repression. That is now a thing of the past. Today, the Bamberg orchestra has a Czech chief conductor, Jakub Hrůša, and has long enjoyed a friendly relationship with its Prague counterparts. .
Artists from the very beginning, audience favorites over the years, musicians for whom the Kissinger Sommer was an important springboard, and those who are at the beginning of a promising career are all participating in the festival's anniversary edition. Elisabeth Leonskaja will perform in the opening concert, Rudolf Buchbinder will perform selected piano concertos by Mozart with the Camerata Salzburg, and Anne-Sophie Mutter will perform Mozart's violin concertos with the Berlin Baroque Soloists, preceded by the Second Concerto by André Previn, who was forced to flee Berlin with his parents as a child in 1933. The highly acclaimed Cecilia Bartoli returns after ten years with three exclusive programs, including a semi-staged performance of Christoph Willibald Gluck's master opera »Orfeo ed Euridice«. Igor Levit, winner of the 2004 KlavierOlymp Prize and artist in residence in 2014, reveals the inspiring effect of vocal art on pianistic virtuosity. With names such as Piotr Anderszewski, Avi Avital, Lisa Batiashvili, Daniel Behle, Isabelle Faust, Julia Fischer, Grigory Sokolov, Christian Tetzlaff, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet, the list of virtuosos of the instrument, like the voice, reads like a cross-generational »Who's Who?« of today’s classical music scene.
Congratulations – Mazel Tov!
Congratulations, then, on forty years of Kissinger Sommer. The word has a double meaning: one that looks back – we congratulate ourselves on what we have achieved – and one that looks ahead – it is part of our aspirations. In this sense, congratulations became the festival motto for 2026 – in Hebrew, as it was also expressed in Yiddish: Mazel Tov. There is the bad Masel, which entered the German language as Schlamassel, and the »good luck«, the Mazel Tov. The language has been chosen deliberately: cultural memory is not limited to a few decades, but reaches far back, as every standard concert program confirms. The Kissinger Sommer is taking its own anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on the Jewish contribution to the history of the city and to the culture that is cultivated here.
Jews had been part of Kissingen's urban development since the 13th century. They had a significant influence on intellectual, economic, and social life, especially when they were granted equal rights with everyone else. Prominent guests of Jewish origin traveled to Bad Kissingen for their summer holidays, including Albertine Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix Mendelssohn's sister-in-law, Albert Einstein, Paul Heyse, the poet and Nobel Prize winner, the painter Max Liebermann, Katia Mann, who came from the culturally-minded Pringsheim family, Giacomo Meyerbeer, who helped French opera achieve greatness, Oscar Straus, who brought a clever new sound to operetta, cabaret, and socially critical revue, and James Simon, the great patron of the arts. Bad Kissingen was not Bad Ischl, where coalitions for new operetta projects were forged every summer, but a retreat, a place where like-minded people could meet, but also be themselves, not a marketplace of vanities, but a cultivated place where encounters, privacy, and discretion were equally valued.
»Antisemitism is madness!«
Theodor W. Adorno once raised the question of »whether the country that expelled its Jews lost as much as they did.« In light of the Shoah, the idea seems audacious. But it touches a cultural nerve. What would the local music scene be without Felix Mendelssohn, without his symphonies, oratorios, chamber music, sacred and secular choral works, without the institutions and initiatives he inspired, such as the Leipzig Conservatory or the Bach Renaissance in the 19th century? His grandfather Moses Mendelssohn, a driving force behind the Jewish Enlightenment, had once moved from Dessau, later the city of the Bauhaus, to Berlin. Joana Mallwitz and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin bring Mendelssohn’s best-known work, the Violin Concerto in E minor, together with a composer whose name is also associated with Dessau: Kurt Weill's father worked there as a cantor; Weill wrote his Second Symphony on the threshold of exile in Paris, looking back on the music that made him famous: his stage works. A third figure completes the picture of a »Dessau trio« as a kind of shadow image: the family of Otto Dessoff, who shaped the Vienna Philharmonic into the benchmark orchestra whose reputation the orchestra still enjoys today, came from the city, which used to be spelled Dessow. At the composer's request, he conducted the premiere of Brahms’ First Symphony; Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra combine it with Antonín Dvořák's Cello Concerto; Brahms had encouraged him – Brahms, the often grumpy Hamburg native who had made his home in Vienna and who, in 1895, commented emphatically on the anti-Jewish agitation of the future mayor Karl Lueger: »Anti-Semitism is madness!« The Budapest Festival Orchestra reminds us in its own special way that there was more than just musical talent in the Mendelssohn family: Fanny, Felix's sister, was every bit as talented as her brother, but social conventions thwarted her public career.
However, Adorno’s provocative question goes deeper, touching on the foundations of education and tradition. Jewish spirituality has shaped European history not only through the Christian-filtered form of faith, but also through fundamental ways of thinking and experiencing. Even the Bible translation and teachings of Martin Luther, who later demonized the Jews in a despicable manner, would have been inconceivable without the dialogue with rabbis of his time. The art of the wise teachers of Judaism, of allowing a small spiritual world to emerge from the contemplation of a single word, is reflected in the classical ideal of developing a musical work from a concise original idea; Brahms was a master of this. The witty play with language that fueled entertainment culture in the 19th and early 20th centuries has its source not least in the ability to »smile through tears«; Jews developed this ability over centuries of recurring pogroms in order to preserve their own dignity; a composer like Dmitri Shostakovich saw it as the epitome of art.
Esprit that entertains
The authors' linguistic wit brought out the composers’ spirit. This resulted in masterpieces ranging from chansons to cabaret songs and operetta arias. They will return to the stage at the Kissinger Sommer 2026 festival in concerts featuring stage greats such as Meret Becker, Katherine Mehrling, and Dagmar Manzel: Paul Abraham, who brought a fresh sparkle to operetta; Mischa Spoliansky with his sophisticated and spicy elegance (a gentleman even before he emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1933); Friedrich Hollaender with his pensive, rebellious, and sharp-tongued melancholy (he often wrote his own lyrics); Werner Richard Heymann, who wrote moving expressionist songs before his cabaret and film evergreens (»Das gibt's nur einmal«, »Ein Freund, ein guter Freund«), and Hanns Eisler, who critically examined the entire horizon of composed music in his oeuvre. In the panorama of the intoxicating, biting, soulful, and eccentric entertainment culture of the Kissinger Sommer, they engage in dialogue with the »Soul of Klezmer«, but also with the virtuosos of the current European burlesque scene.
For half a century, artists and scholars have been increasingly dedicated to rediscovering composers persecuted by the Nazis. As a result, much has been recovered for concert life, such as works by Viktor Ullmann, Pavel Haas, Gideon Klein, Hans Krasa, and Hans Winterberg, who were interned in Theresienstadt. Attention increasingly turned to the large area stretching from Vilnius (then Wilna) via Warsaw, Krakow, Lviv (then Lemberg) and Chernivtsi to Odessa and the Crimea. Around a hundred years ago, a rich Jewish cultural life flourished there. David Grossmann and the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich commemorate Joel Engel, who collected songs from the Jewish diaspora at the beginning of the 20th century and wrote the music for »Dibbuk«, a classic of Yiddish theater. They combine the overture with songs by Mieczysław Weinberg, who came from the milieu of Warsaw Jewish theater and, after fleeing to the Soviet Union, became one of Dmitri Shostakovich's closest friends (»To enemies of the Jews, I am like a Jew«) – much to the latter's advantage.
To mark its anniversary, Kissinger Sommer is presenting a panorama of European music. Without the achievements of Jewish intellectualism, it would not be what it is today. Remembering this sends a clear message at a time of resurgent anti-Semitism. Congratulations, and all the best for the future. Mazel Tov!
