In early May, Oksana Lyniv opened the 2021 season with the festival orchestra, and now the conductor, who was the first woman to take the podium at the Bayreuth Festival in the summer of 2021, will become music director of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in January 2022.

In the new series of talks by and with Elisa Erkelenz and David-Maria Gramse, unusual connections of classical music with philosophy, science, (martial) arts and pop are brought to light and thus »the pudel's core« of that genre is explored from a variety of perspectives. The podcast is released on the first of every month and is also available on our Digital Stage.

Over the course of a month, nine young people between the ages of 20 and 30 came together for six online workshops lasting several hours and dealt intensively with diverse gender identities and perceptions through writing tasks, movement sequences and free exchange. A filmic insight into the work can be seen on the Digital Stage.

In the spirit of a »Festival of the Arts, Democracy and Sustainability« and also in the spirit of Joseph Beuys' proclamation »Everyone is an artist«, all Ludwigsburg residents were invited to join in. In this special year of distance, cohesion and the 100th anniversary of Beuys' birth, the Ludwigsburg Festival and Brad Hwang jointly recalled the transformative power of social sculpture.

Idolized by musicians, misused in dictatorships, re-adapted as the European anthem – Beethoven’s 9th symphony mirrors the society and shows the dimensions of human behaviour. We want to take a closer look at the work, which played a major role in the 2021 season, and its politicised performance history.

Mahler’s “Song of the Earth” gave new meaning to the poetry of Hans Bethge. Likewise, the photographs of J Henry Fair also open up a new dimension. With “Das Lied von der Erde for the 21st Century “ the photographer and environmental activist makes a clear statement: The earth is in danger!

The starting point of the Pixelsinfonie is Beethoven's 6th symphony - the »Pastorale«, to which the composer Michael Rauter has set against a composition of his own. The piece was originally planned as music theater for 30 hotel rooms in the Ludwigsburg NH. Since the Corona reality had overtaken his original idea, he had to start from scratch in terms of content.

Since the rigged presidential elections in August 2020, Belarus has been in a state of emergency. The regime has reacted with unrestrained use of force to peaceful protests in which countrymen demand fair elections, but also many other basic rights that have been restricted for years. Among the protesters are the sisters' Maria Kalesnikava and Tatsiana Khomich. Jochen Sandig met the latter for an interview this year.

»The concept of race is the result of racism and not its precondition«. The Jena Declaration was published in 2019 by Prof. Dr. Martin Fischer and Prof. Dr. Uwe Hoßfeld, who teach at the University of Jena.

In June 2020 the work »I can't breathe« by Georg Friedrich Haas was performed in memory of Eric Garner and George Floyd. In connection with this performance, we would like to share an article by author and publicist Carolin Emcke with you.

On World Environment Day, we, the Ludwigsburg Festival, would like to report on our own contribution to a climate-neutral and sustainable cultural landscape in the narrow sense and to the implementation of the 17 goals in the broad sense. It is very important to us to keep an eye on the effects of our institutional actions, to check them and to constantly improve them.