New talent for Summer Concerts

Two outstanding musicians will soon lend their talents to the Audi Summer Concerts, with performances by violinist Pekka Kuusisto this year and the announcement that Lisa Batiashvili will become artistic director in 2019.

New concert venues, a diverse supporting program and distinctive leitmotifs will define the Audi Summer Concerts from now on. “We are giving our audience an active way to access classical music with our new festival program and surprising highlights. We are also bringing music to museums, for instance,” said Melanie Goldmann, Head of Culture and Trends Communications at Audi. In addition, fans of the summer concerts will be able to test the festival air from the very start, as this year’s festival will start off with the popular classical open-air concerts at Klenzepark.
“It is primarily the artists and their ideas that give a festival its profile and that make it something special,” Goldmann said. “So we are very proud to enter into two strong alliances with outstanding artists.” Next year Lisa Batiashvili, a violinist born in Tbilisi, will take over the artistic direction for an initial period of two years. 

The 2018 festival will open with Finnish violinist Kuusisto on July 13 together with the internationally acclaimed Mahler Chamber Orchestra, which will be performing for the first time in Ingolstadt. 

Audi has hosted its own classical music festival since 1990, attracting some of the most renowned names in classic music including Anne-Sophie Mutter, Sir Simon Rattle, the Vienna Philharmonic, Lang Lang and Juan Diego Flórez. Since its inception, the Audi Summer Festival has drawn more than a quarter of a million visitors  from all over the world to the concert venues in and around Ingolstadt. 

The annual guest performance of the Salzburg Festival is a particularly enjoyable tradition at the summer concerts that continues to this day. This is a privilege for Ingolstadt that no other city in the world enjoys.

When the Audi Summer Concerts celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2009, Audi added two large open-air concerts with free admission as a thank you to the many loyal patrons whose attendance each year had helped make the festival such a success. More than 17,000 visitors flocked to Klenzepark, and their enthusiasm resulted in the Classic Open Air series being continued to this day.

In 2014, Audi and the internationally successful conductor Kent Nagano launched the three-year ‘Vorsprung-Festival’ – a festival within the festival that focused on especially progressive artists and programs, which established new interfaces between great classical music stars and emerging young talent. The Audi Summer Concerts 2018 will take place July 13 – 28.