Classical, contemporary and early music 2025
The music plays on

Germany’s musical year is sending positive messages: audience numbers are rising, more people are making music themselves, classical music is finding wider reach on social networks, and the industry is opening up. Although the pressure remains high in terms of cultural funding. What does that mean for the future?

By Ida Hermes

Nowadays there are plenty of ways the world could end, even if it’s only the world of culture. Against a backdrop of crisis and war, the debate over the target audience of art and culture in Germany is more contentious, which raises the question of whether extravagant opera productions, for instance, can still be justified as a result.

The opera sector is only too familiar with this debate. The composer Ernst Krenek became embroiled in a huge quarrel on this topic in 1937, with his article Ist Oper heute noch möglich? (Is opera still possible today?) And he added, with a hint of irony: “The question as to whether opera is ‘still possible today’ almost always implied a different question: whether it is compatible with the […] level of rationality required in order to accept this operatic essence, characterised as it is by […] nonsense, in good faith and with good will.”  

A future clouded with uncertainty

The current state of rationality seems to deal with nonsense cheerfully – at least with regard to AI chatbots, who are busy inventing their own world. The outlook is somewhat less cheerful in terms of culture funding, although there has been a recent development at national government level. Huge cuts to the cultural budget were planned for 2025, and then came a surprise mid-year: for the time being, the government is topping up the cultural budget – including Saarland and North Rhine-Westphalia, where they are now promising eight million more instead of cutbacks of eight million.

There is scarcely cause for optimism: the lion’s share of culture funding is coming from the local councils, and they are recording massive deficits. It is difficult to predict how the situation will develop. In addition to cuts, being unable to plan is a concern for artists.

Among the general population, interest in cultural activities has steadily increased in recent years, according to the Freizeit-Monitor ten‑year review in 2023. A survey conducted by the Music Information Centre in April 2025 found that the proportion of people who make music themselves has risen to over twenty percent. The interest in attending classical music festivals remains constant at eleven per cent.

From blockbuster to innovation

The industry is responding to the ever‑present downward spiral on the one hand with escapism and crowd‑pleasing favourites – such as Mozart’s Magic Flute – which remain as popular as ever and on the other hand with a kind of anticipatory trauma processing. At the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik festival in May, composer Sara Glojnarić gives her audience headphones, leads them acoustically into the ballroom of the passenger steamer MS Titanic – and allows them to sink with the ship. Before everyone breaks out in a chorus of Céline Dion, soprano Sarah Maria Sun asks: “What’s your music for the end of the world?”

Songs for the End of the World is both a live podcast and a headphone concert, taking an artistic approach to open up a space for grief, fear of the future, and empathy. Sara Glojnarić received the German Music Authors’ Award in 2025, winning in the Emerging Artist category. The way she moves between pop culture and humour, experiment and seriousness makes her a pioneering artist. The end of the world is a recurring theme for productions throughout 2025. Philippe Manoury brings Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, which is based on the work of Karl Kraus, to the stage in Cologne. Ketan Bhatti shows us Odysseus at the Beethovenfest – a flawed hero struggling to retain the power to define meaning in his own world, even as he plunges it into the abyss. And war makes an entrance at the Opera in Bonn. The scene: an auditorium, its seating removed, a stray bomb has smashed the dome and is smoking in the stage set.

It is a scenario reminiscent of images from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. This is reflected in a musical language of the 1980s that has been struck speechless: in the only opera by Georgian composer Giya Kancheli, the words are strung together for their sound rather than their meaning. “To be or not to be?” sings Clélia Oemus, aged seventeen, in her crystal-clear, almost celestial voice. And passes the question forward to the opera establishment: can art still happen against the backdrop of war, and above all – is it still meaningful?

At Bonn Theatre, ironically enough, the future of the Fokus ’33 series currently remains uncertain. Backed by substantial research projects, the series revives works that were lost in the political din of their time.

The machine is taking over

When it comes to historical performance practice, the Ruhrtriennale presents something completely new this summer. The festival uses industrial heritage sites throughout the Ruhr region as venues for its cross‑genre programme. The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble from the UK is invited to the Turbinenhalle in Bochum, where they perform music by Bach, Handel, Beethoven and Berlioz on original Moog synthesisers. In faithful homage to Wendy Carlos – the pioneer of electronic music who was one of the Moog’s developers in the 1960s.

This type of analogue electronics, from a time that pre-dates the development of artificial intelligence, has now become “old”. Machines of the new generation, now AI-driven, produce images that can only be distinguished from real photographs by a watermark – and they are running riot across the streaming platforms. AI bands churn out music – sometimes with ethno-nationalist content – and it is consumed enthusiastically, chiefly by other bots. Admittedly there is a certain comic element here, but there are serious consequences for composers: it causes payouts to be generated artificially – and this money  is then missing from the pot for those who make their living from music and already receive little from the streaming giants. The premiere of Oracle at the Ruhrtriennale reaches for the stars and brings an artificial intelligence to consciousness. Chaotic, loud, threatening. The question arises as to whether this is the only way to bring about the end or whether it has actually been imminent for a long time. The reviews interpreted this in very different ways.

“Anyone who is afraid of being replaced by AI should ask themselves why,” writes Kaan Bulak, who makes use of AI in his day-to-day life as a composer and pianist. A simple example: if he wants a singer to sing a lyric backwards, AI can transcribe it quickly. “Of course options for AI-generated music exist, but their use doesn’t overlap with my creative work. Especially now that objective work can be handled by AI, intuitive and subjective perspectives are clearly gaining value in the artistic field.”

Living between Berlin and Istanbul, Kaan Bulak lets traditions flow into one another in his music, becoming one. The song Fructus Eius plays around with fragments that move in different directions and overlap each other. A piece like a flower, which allows time to stand still for a moment on the fast-paced internet.

Nerd content goes viral

On social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, classical music is very popular for the first time. This is often as entertaining as it is niche, for example when flutes create a mash-up of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Reed Flutes with Milkshake by Kelis (2003) – and go viral with it. It also means that the pianist Louis Philippson from Mülheim an der Ruhr ends up on the news: he posts challenges, for example ones he sets himself or ones suggested by his community – such as being able to play an “unplayable” piece within ten minutes.

Or it ensures that an impromptu organ concert by Anna Lapwood paralyses Cologne's city centre. Around 13,000 young people queue up in the July sun. And because Anna Lapwood doesn’t want to disappoint them, she plays a second concert in the cathedral straight afterwards. “The only people who laugh at that are those who have never heard her,” observes Wolfram Goertz in Die Zeit. And indeed, the Interstellar film score is nothing short of otherworldly when played on the organ. Anna Lapwood is currently a resident artist at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

One artist everyone can agree on – independent critics and major labels alike – is violinist Antje Weithaas, who has also been a professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin since 2004. Her recording of Pēteris Vasks’s Second Violin Concerto earned her the Opus Klassik award for Instrumentalist of the Year this autumn. “For contemporary music – which pleases me especially!”

Weithaas commands a broad repertoire, and does so as a storyteller who immerses herself in different styles with an agile approach and a love of detail. “I only record music when I feel an absolutely unambiguous inner urge to do so. It’s about feeling your way in, engaging with a score, feeling empathy with the mentality of these people, their language – that’s really important – and then processing it for yourself and developing a conviction you want to present.”

High pressure for emerging artists

Documentaries and films have recently been moving closer to the artists themselves, both in content and in form. In Primadonna or Nothing, Würzburg‑based director Juliane Sauter portrays the singers Valerie Eickhoff, Angel Joy Blue and Renata Scotto, exploring what it means when a life revolves entirely around music. The ARD series Anastasia Kobekina – Jetzt oder nie! (Now or Never!) follows the story of how an exceptional talent is developed into a brand, looking behind the scenes at her journey towards her debut album.

The pressure on emerging artists is higher than ever. That doesn’t apply solely to top-tier talent development. The ARD series follows a young cellist, who is supported in every respect on her path to becoming a professional musician, but struggles to retain autonomy. The usual practice in day‑to‑day operations is quite different. For years now, labels have only contributed to the costs, development and organisation of album productions in exceptional circumstances. It’s not only young musicians who have to bear the costs up front and acquire the knowledge needed for music distribution themselves.

Culture cutbacks are jeopardising the change process

Cultural funding alone is not enough when it comes to addressing structural problems in the cultural sector. Courage is needed, at every level, to ensure that increasingly expensive, heavily subsidised theatres and opera houses are not politically played off against the independent scene.

In recent years, the musical landscape has become more diverse; it has flourished again since the end of the pandemic. One thing has become clear: the independent scene in particular holds immense creative and innovative potential, from which major festivals and institutions also benefit. But it is precisely here, in the independent scene, that the most precarious working conditions are found – and right now they are frequently deteriorating further. In times of crisis and uncertainty, it is vital to take an honest look at resources. A redirection of funding may also be called for. And an awareness that, as well as the art, the artists’ livelihood is at stake. Anyone who hasn’t needed to worry about funding yet should at least show solidarity.