41th International Music Festival
11/05/25 – 26/05/25
»If [I] did not have love, I would be nothing«, writes Paul of Tarsus in chapter 13 of his first letter to the early Christian church in Corinth. Nothing less than love is the alpha and omega of the 41st International Music Festival at the Wiener Konzerthaus: it begins with a meta-opera with Klangforum Wien as a semi-staged ride through the opera literature of the last hundred years, which deals with love in all its possibilities and impossibilities. At the end is Beethoven's Ninth with Schiller's ode »To Joy«, whose verses anticipate Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in an astonishing way: »All men [...] shall meet one another in a spirit of brotherhood.« In between, there is a wealth of top-class concerts that shed light on love in one way or another.