When an airplane hangar becomes a concert hall…

It all started with a bold idea from pianist Markus Groh, who has been organizing concerts in the region since 1999.

He wanted to turn an airplane hangar, where Soviet fighter jets once stood, into a fully-fledged acoustic concert hall.

This idea first took shape in 2001 – in an initially provisionally converted hangar of the 1950s Groß-Dölln military airport, which was decommissioned in 1994 and where up to 15,000 soldiers were stationed during the Cold War.

This concept has since developed into a well-known international chamber music festival, the Bebersee Festival, named after a nearby village. Another concert hangar is now available, which was last renovated in 2014 and now has a new look.

The concerts deliberately take place in a setting of sober military architecture, dilapidated military accommodation and the miles of natural scenery of the surrounding Schorfheide-Chorin biosphere reserve. Since the first official Bebersee Festival in 2003, renowned artists have come together for nine days each summer to inspire the audience with their unusual programs.

In addition to thematic focuses and composer portraits on milestone anniversaries (2006: Mozart’s piano concertos, 2008: Brahms’ solo piano works, 2009: chamber music by Haydn and Mendelssohn), political themes have also been addressed. In 2005, for example, the victims of the first atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were commemorated under the motto “From West to East – Japan”. This was very well received by the public and the press. With “Paths – Circles – Endgames”, the 2007 festival week focused on cultural exchange and young composers and musicians from countries with problematic relationships (Poland-Germany and Greece-Turkey). Multimedia projects and staged concerts were also repeatedly included in the program planning.

Thanks to the good contacts of the young festival director Prof. Markus Groh, who was the first German to win the famous Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in 1995, internationally renowned artists come to the region every year. So far, Akiko Suwanai and Claudio Bohórquez (2001), Boris Pergamenschikow, Antje Weithaas, Ib Hausmann and Alban Gerhardt (2002) have performed here. In 2003, the year the festival was founded, Viviane Hagner, Adrian Brendel, Arabella Steinbacher and Tanja Tetzlaff came to Bebersee for the first time. They have been followed by Claudia Barainsky, Hans Leygraf, Baiba Skride, Alexander Lonquich, Kirill Gerstein, Daishin Kashimoto, the Kuss Quartet, the piano duo Yaara Tal/Andreas Groethuysen, the pianists Cédric Tiberghien, Matthias Kirschnereit, Jan Gottlieb Jiracek and the actor Ulrich Matthes – to name but a few classical stars.

Tourism Award:

In 2004, the Bebersee Festival was the winner of the Brandenburg Tourism Prize, which is awarded by Tourismus Marketing Brandenburg in cooperation with the state of Brandenburg for particularly worthy projects in the area of cooperation between the various cultural and tourism partners in the region.