We are thrilled to announce Tonhain Kollektiv’s Season 2 – RESIST! The Sound of Defiance, our second full season of concerts taking place between September 2025 and June 2026 at Tonhain.
We are also currently launching a BetterPlace to help fundraise 5,000 EUR for this upcoming season, given the challenging current funding environment in Berlin. We invite you to support us, and explore the many exciting donation rewards being offered.
This season, we introduce a new interdisciplinary component to our programming: three Interludes that bring music into dialogue with political activism, literature, and fashion design. These events complement six full-length concerts and deepen our exploration of resistance not just as a musical theme, but as a multifaceted cultural act. RESIST! explores how composers and artists across time have used their voices to endure oppression, subvert authoritarianism, and inspire protest.
Our season opens with Concert: Soundtrack of the Resistance on 26 September 2025 at 19:00, featuring Schoenberg’s satirical Ode to Napoleon, Pavel Haas’s ironic Third Quartet, and Shostakovich’s masterfully subversive Piano Quintet. The season continues with Interlude: Hay que caminar on 24 October, a portrait of 20th-century Italian composer Luigi Nono as artist-activist.
In Concert: From My Life (21 November), we highlight music that celebrates identity and ethnic diversity, with works by Chopin, Dvořák, Gabriela Lena Frank, and others. Then, in Concert: Protest Anthems (12 December), we explore protest works such as American composer George Crumb’s Black Angels for electric string quartet, a reaction to the Vietnam War, Steve Reich’s 9/11 threnody, Beethoven’s ‘Serioso’ Quartet, and Jimi Hendrix’s radical reimagining of the American national anthem.
The new year opens with Interlude: Human Acts (20 February 2026), pairing the prose of Korean author Han Kang, who recently won the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the powerful music of Isang Yun, who was kidnapped and tortured by the South Korean authoritarian government in the 1960s.
In Concert: Dream Portraits (20 March 2026), Messiaen’s transcendent masterpiece, Quartet for the End of Time, meets protest songs by Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, as well as evocative works by Margaret Bonds and Maurice Ravel - his Madagascar Songs for mezzo-soprano, flute, cello, and piano, a rarely heard gem.
Concert: Musica non grata (24 April 2026) gives voice to the silenced: composers who were persecuted and saw their music banned during the Nazi era, including Gideon Klein, Bohuslav Martinů, Erwin Schulhoff, and Korngold.
Interlude: Spectacle (15 May 2026), in collaboration with fashion designer Jenny Lai, explores the intersection of suffrage, fashion, and music through works by Amy Beach, Lili Boulanger, and Theresa Wong.
We close with Concert: Defiance (12 June 2026), featuring Bartók’s Quartet No. 6, his protest against facism in Europe, a harp-viola-flute trio emblematic of Sofia Gubaidulina’s spiritual resistance to the Soviet authorities, and music by Reza Vali and André Jolivet that find hope out of adversity.
We are delighted to welcome a host of returning and new guest artists to the Tonhain stage this season. This season sees the Tonhain debut of internationally acclaimed performers including Aliya Vodovozova (Flute), Sào Soulez Larivière (Viola), Tehila Nini Goldstein (Soprano), Georgii Moroz (violin), Hanni Liang (Piano), Larissa Cidlinsky (violin),and Marion Ravot (Harp).
Season 2 is an invitation to reflect on history and current events through the lens of music that challenges the political status quo. We can’t wait to share it with you.