For five months in 2018 Goethe’s drama ‘Faust’ is at the center of Munich‘s cultural landscape. 500 events, inspired by this seminal work, are being staged by 200 institutions and partners: exhibitions, concerts, parties, movies and strange performances.

As part of the Faust Festival we will hear a free concert of the Münchener Kammerorchester at the headquarters of Versicherungskammer Bayern, entitled SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL. The programme explores the mephistophelic side of classical music.

Italian violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini was considered a demonic figure, both for of his dark, gaunt appearance and his stupendous, unearthly technique. Russian Ilya Gringolts, today‘s Paganini interpreter par excellence, plays the spectacular First Violin Concerto.

‘La casa del diavolo’ by Luigi Boccherini, Paganini’s senior by 40 years, refers to a musical portrayal of the purgatory composed by his colleague Christoph Willibald Gluck. Contemporary American composer George Crumb‘s ‘Black Angels’ for electric string quartet consists of a veritable catalogue of sounds of horror and fear. The beginning of this work was appropriately used as the soundtrack of the horror movie ‘The Exorcist.’ The piece was inspired by the very real inferno of the Vietnam war.

Contact: fk-muenchen@daad-alumni.de