The Herrenchiemsee Festival was founded by Enoch zu Guttenberg and was one of the conductor’s many passions. In 2000, he tested the suitability of the Hall of Mirrors in Herrenchiemsee Royal Palace as a concert hall with a seven-day “Bach Festival”. The following year, the Herrenchiemsee Festival was born, which has since developed into an institution in international musical life: a concept festival with an unmistakable profile and the highest artistic standards. The concerts are a unique experience in both artistic and aesthetic terms.
BACK TO THE FUTURE - A HOMAGE TO LUDWIG II The year 2011 is the 125th anniversary of the mysterious death of King Ludwig II in Lake Starnberg. The state of Bavaria is taking this opportunity to honour the life and works of the "fairy-tale king" with a major exhibition...
SUN KINGS AND SHADOW KINGDOMS In earlier years, the festival dramaturgy was primarily determined by anniversaries and political occasions: the Mozart year 2006, commemoration of the Constitutional Convention of 1948, the climate-change debate. In its tenth season, the...
STILL LIFE. NATURE MORTE In 1803 the thousand years of monastic culture on Herrenchiemsee came to a violent end with the dissolution of the monasteries throughout the Holy Roman Empire. The Island Cathedral, an outstanding monument of Bavarian Baroque, was irreparably...
TURNING POINT The programme of the Herrenchiemsee Festival was devoted, in accordance with the occasion that prompted it, primarily to works in which musical expression is given to resistance to racism, dictatorship and war, together with the experience of a new...
MASCULINE - FEMININE Frauenchiemsee and Herrenchiemsee as two close neighbours, islands that are linked yet separate: this symbolism stimulates thought games no less than does the extreme difference in personality of the two historical protagonists who left their mark...
MOZART-LINES In 1864, in a letter to Richard Wagner, King Ludwig II sketched out a programme with which he sought to revolutionize the Munich theatre scene and transfer the audience into "a loftier, more collected mood". The stage was henceforth to be dominated by the...
"Artificial Paradises: Dream Landscapes in Music" When Charles Baudelaire published his essay "Les Paradis artificiels" in 1860, he was concerned at first only with a critical confrontation with the (already) fashionable recreational drugs hashish and opium. By...
"With the World - Against the World: Music in Harmony and in Conflict with its Time" The motto of the 2004 festival referred to Ludwig II. Today, the King of Bavaria is the archetype of the cliché of the "unrecognized genius", whom it was left to posterity to...
