Cooperations

In 2007, Steinway and the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig launched the Steinway Prize Winner Concerts network, which brings together piano competitions, concert organizers, festivals and radio stations on an international level.

These concerts present pianists who have been specially selected and recommended by Steinway at an early stage of their career. The basic idea of the network is to promote young pianists: In concert practice, it can be observed that audiences react cautiously to newcomers and instead prefer concerts with well-known artists. Yet it is precisely the lesser-known artists who need a stage and an audience at the beginning of their career!

With the Concert Lab, Leuphana University has been part of the Steinway Prize Winner Concert Network since 2023 and is its first academic partner. Every winter semester, a seminar is held as part of the cooperation as co-teaching with a Steinway Prize Winner - a young pianist. Pianists and students are given the task of examining a given topic from different perspectives and creating a concert evening together. A public concert in the Leuphana Auditorium marks the conclusion of this collaboration.

Since its foundation on Claudio Abbado's initiative in 1997, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) has established itself as one of the world's best chamber orchestras. The orchestra functions as a “global collective”, led by its members together with the Berlin-based management office. The musicians from around 25 nations come together to make music for their numerous projects.The MCO regularly breaks new musical and social ground with its programs and formats.

The Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO) and Leuphana University Lüneburg will be cooperating for several semesters from October 2024 as part of the Leuphana Concert Lab. The subject of the cooperation is the Musikwoche Hitzacker, for which the MCO will be the artistic director from 2024 to 2028.

“We see the cooperation as a great opportunity to network with institutions in the region as part of our artistic direction of the Musikwoche Hitzacker and to exchange ideas with Leuphana students. By involving them in the concept for Musikwoche Hitzacker 2026, we want to increase the relevance of the festival, especially for young people,” says Janina Rinck, Development Manager of the MCO.

TONALiSTEN is a non-profit agency for artistic and social concert projects. It promotes outstanding young musicians who want to become involved in shaping the cultural and concert life of the future.

The Leuphana Concert Lab and TONALiSTEN have been cooperating on various activities since 2023: A joint seminar takes place every summer semester. The partner musicians and students deal with a current topic, examine it from different perspectives and work intensively with the TONALiSTEN team in workshops. Over the course of the semester, they develop an interdisciplinary concert evening that is performed both at Leuphana University and in the TONALi-Saal in Hamburg. 

In addition, the Concert Lab seminars regularly go on concert excursions to TONALiSTEN events in Hamburg. Among other activities, the students practise participant observation and moderating audience discussions and learn about different approaches to concert design. 

In fall 2024, the accompanying online course “Society-oriented concert design - an introduction” was developed with the TONALiSTEN, which is aimed at Leuphana students and musicians in the TONALi Stage Academy.

“We at TONALi are convinced that a sustainable education for musicians must go hand in hand with an intensive examination of their own social mission and impact. We are still seeing a huge gap in education at conservatoires in this area: Current topics and issues hardly find their way into curricula and concert practice; there is virtually no engagement with the audience or non-audience members and communities. 

For this reason, we have developed our three-year part-time training program - the TONALi Stage Academy. Here, our academy students want to and should deal with precisely this issue: How can I, as a musician, develop socially relevant projects and formats? What role can art and music play for the issues of our time? What professional images and skills are needed today and tomorrow? [...] For us, collaborations such as the one with the Leuphana Concert Lab are exemplary for the path to the future: working together with actors from various fields in research and experimental settings to design the future of a socially and impact-oriented music and art practice,” says Jonathan Pengl, Managing Director of TONALiSTEN.

The North German chamber orchestra ensemble reflektor sees itself as an ambassador for a musical culture without borders. The musicians of ensemble reflektor work together to develop concert programs that combine different works beyond their genres. Whether in clubs or industrial halls, as an orchestra or chamber music ensemble - the musicians' creative formats always create a special proximity to the audience and enable a new approach to music.

In 2019, ensemble reflektor founded its own festival in Lüneburg: ultraBACH. As part of the festival, the ensemble brings Bach into the 21st century with interdisciplinary productions, house music and commissioned works and involves the Lüneburg city community in the concerts.

The ensemble reflektor already collaborated with a Leuphana seminar at ultraBACH 2023. In the 2025 edition of the festival, the collaboration will be continued and expanded as part of the Concert Lab: A complementary seminar will design a program item of the festival itself. The focus will be on the topics of change, democracy and exchange, which the ensemble will also address in its major one-year project, the “FÜNFSPARTENHAUS DER EINHEIT”.