John Allison, expert lecturer on our spring 2025 tour exploring Hamburg, opera, classical music and architecture, describes what makes the city such a vivid and relevant destination for music lovers.

There are just a few cities in the world where a musical venue – concert hall or opera house – has become an internationally recognized symbol of that place. Sydney, of course, is one such example, but Hamburg became another almost eight years ago with the opening of its magnificent Elbphilharmonie. Rising like an iceberg on top of an old brick warehouse adjacent to the Speicherstadt district, the Elphi – as it is known locally – has become a huge draw for tourists and music-lovers alike. Tickets are always in demand, and we expect a full hall at the beginning of March when we attend the Ravel-Eötvös-Rachmaninov programme conducted there by the fast-rising baton Thomas Guggeis.

Interior and exterior shots of 'Elphi', Defne Kuckukmustafa, Claudio Schwartz ©

The Elphi is the latest attraction in a musical landscape stretching back several hundred years. The 17th century saw Hamburg prosper as the trading capital of northern Germany, and trade brought travellers from all directions, not least from the south, bringing with them the huge stimulus of Italian music. Hamburg, in common with Leipzig, was a mercantile city – in fact these two cities stand apart from the rest of Germany because their musical lives were also to some extent all about free trade and market forces.

Passion music also became a distinct genre in Hamburg, and the city can claim to have been the chief centre of German oratorio. Georg Philipp Telemann was active there, and it was his reluctance to leave the city and its attractive posts that led to the opening in Leipzig for Bach. (Telemann had been Leipzig’s preferred candidate.) As it happens, C.P.E. Bach, one of Johann Sebastian’s sons, succeeded Telemann as Kapellmeister in Hamburg, and is buried in the spectacular St Michael’s Church, which features on our itinerary. Close by is the Komponistenquartier (Composers’ Quarter), a charming row of museums celebrating not only Telemann but also the other great composers later associated with the city – Brahms, Mendelssohn and Mahler.

Commercial prosperity and the influx of foreigners led to the need for operatic entertainment, and a group of enlightened citizens banded together in the second half of the 17th century to establish the country’s first public opera house, built on the Venetian model at the city’s Gänsemarkt (Goose Market), close to the present Staatsoper. The fame of that theatre drew Handel to the city, and the fame of its successor enticed Gustav Mahler as music director. On entering the present-day Staatsoper – where we will see Mozart’s Mitridate and Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann – visitors today may admire the plaque commemorating Mahler’s achievements there.

Hamburg is not just one of the great musical cities; the richness of its cultural life is also reflected at the Kunsthalle and in the eye-catching architecture on show everywhere.

I hope you can join us for Hamburg: Opera & Elphi — Music, arts & architecture in Germany’s second city, 28 February–4 March 2025.

With best wishes,
John Allison