Founded in 2005, the Lower Rhine Music Festival takes the motto SOUNDS – COLOURS – LANGUAGE. Far from limiting itself to the power of sound, it draws various artistic disciplines together in an inspired and inspiring way – not only classicism, jazz and folklore, but painting and dancing are essential ingredients of the recipe for success through which Festival gains its distinctively intimate atmosphere.
Here, through enthusiastic experimentation and meeting the challenges of new content, unique ideas for projects ripen into eye-catching programmes for premieres which give the Festival a totally independent profile – a festival with the character of a workshop. These concepts and creative processes, which are able to cross over normal boundaries, make the Lower Rhine Music Festival into a real magnet for many well-known artists who are glad to add their contribution to independent original projects.
SOUNDS – COLOURS – LANGUAGE provides the starting point, and at the end new visions and sound-worlds are created which are there ready to be discovered exclusively at the Lower Rhine Music Festival.
Most of the events take place in locations that are in themselves notable sights in the Lower Rhine area. The BarockFestsaal at Schloss Dyck (or, weather permitting, its inner courtyard, which has a particularly splendid acoustic), the futuristic Langen Foundation at the former NATO missile base on the Museumsinsel Hombroich, the pleasantly intimate atmosphere of the baroque church at Wickrathberg, the long, elegant concert hall of the Zeughaus at Neuss, and the acoustically unique Robert Schumann Hall in Düsseldorf – all these are locations and spaces in which sounds, language and colours feel quite at home.
Photograph: Tomas Riehleartur images.