2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the GUSTAV MAHLER JUGENDORCHESTER. In spring 1987, Claudio Abbado conducted the first public concerts of the newly founded orchestra in Vienna and its neighbouring capitals. For the 2012 tours, the GUSTAV MAHLER JUGENDORCHESTER pays tribute to its founding partner cities and long term presenters, festivals and concert halls.

During the Easter Tour 2012, the GUSTAV MAHLER JUGENDORCHESTER will perform twelve concerts with two exceptional programmes in seven European countries. DAVID AFKHAM and Swedish soprano IRENE THEORIN, widely acclaimed in Bayreuth, Vienna, and Salzburg, will present Wagner: The Death of Isolde from Tristan und Isolde as well as Brünnhilde’s Final Scene from Götterdämmerung. Wagner’s revolutionary compositions and their importance and influence on the music of the 20th century are the recurring theme in the exciting programmes of this year’s Easter Tour, combining the epochal, ground breaking Six Pieces for Orchestra op. 6 (1909) by Anton von Webern with Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Photoptosis, Aleksandr Scriabin’s Le Poème de L’Extase and  Dmitri Shostakovich’s symphony no.7.

Besides appearances in the orchestra’s founding cities Vienna, Graz, Prague, and Warsaw, the GUSTAV MAHLER JUGENDORCHESTER will perform, as every year, in some of the most important European concert halls: two concerts in the Vienna Musikverein, two concerts at the Fundaçao Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, as well as one concert in the Laeiszhalle Hamburg and the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid prove the exceptional artistic reputation of the GUSTAV MAHLER JUGENDORCHESTER. The Festival Interlaken Classics is the residential partner (as previously in 2008, 2009, and 2011) and will stage three concerts at the beginning of the Easter Tour 2012.