The Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, founded in 1986, has had a lasting impact on festival culture in Germany. At that time, it was revolutionary to allow world stars such as the US composer, conductor and pianist Leonard Bernstein or the US violinist, conductor and viola player Yehudi Menuhin to perform in barns and manor houses in the agricultural region between the North and Baltic Seas.
The film “Music Between the Seas – The Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival 2024” combines high-quality concert recordings with documentary encounters and impressive landscape photographs. An artist from this year’s festival, Asya Fateyeva, leads through the “concert experience documentary” with her saxophone and her curious and charming manner as a dynamic host. The Schleswig-Holstein resident from Ukraine not only meets talented musicians from all over the world, but also discovers her new home.
In addition to the Russian cellist Anastasia Kobekina – the star of the concert recording – the Israeli mandolinist Avi Avital, the Chinese pianist Lang Lang and his wife Gina Alice and the Kiel actor Axel Milberg will be featured. Anastasia Kobekina receives the Leonard Bernstein Award, the first winner of which was Lang Lang.
It is not only through this connection that the film repeatedly delves into the eventful history of the festival, in which politics and glamor are combined with the charm of the rural region. Volunteer advisory boards and Holstein veterans talk about their festival experiences in the film. Interesting findings about brick Gothic in Lübeck and industrial monuments on the Kiel Canal are shown, as well as great music in barns, churches and a shipyard.
