Koblenz Rhine Guitar International Competition Hubert Käppel

An international guitar competition named after Hubert Käppel, featuring multiple rounds, a finale, and a prizegiving concert.

Repertoire requirements

Check website

• Preliminary Round · 20 min
  • Free choice program
• Semi-Final · 25 min
  • Free choice program
• Final · 30 min
  • Free choice recital

Official website

https://rhineguitar.de/

Visiting? A guitarist's guide to Koblenz

Photo: Wolkenkratzer, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Where the Rhine meets the Moselle, Koblenz hosts one of the largest guitar festivals in the world, a nine-day gathering that has run for more than thirty years and draws players and teachers from dozens of countries. Its competition, named for the guitarist Hubert Käppel, sits at the heart of a week of recitals, orchestral concerts and masterclasses in a beautiful stretch of the Rhine valley.

Getting there

The main Rhine railway runs straight through Koblenz, which makes it an easy arrival: a little over an hour by direct train from Frankfurt Airport (FRA), the handiest gateway, and about an hour from Cologne, with Cologne/Bonn (CGN) a second airport option. The stretch of line along the river here is one of the loveliest in Germany, threading past vineyards and hilltop castles, and the riverside station leaves you a short walk from the old town and the festival venues.

Compare trains, buses & flights to Koblenz on Omio →

Germany runs on Type F sockets, standard across most of Europe, so you will only need a travel adapter if you are coming from the UK, Ireland, or beyond Europe.

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Where to stay

Base yourself in the Altstadt, the old town, and everything is on foot: the knot of squares around the Jesuitenplatz and the Florinsmarkt, the cheeky Schängel fountain that catches passers-by with a jet of water, and the long riverside promenade that runs out to the Deutsches Eck, the great spit of land where the Moselle pours into the Rhine beneath a colossal equestrian statue. Koblenz is a relaxed river city, well set up for a few days of music and walking, with the festival venues close to the water.

What you'll hear

The competition runs through several solo rounds to a final for the best half-dozen players, while the surrounding festival offers a nightly concert series, a gala with the local orchestra, and masterclasses with star teachers. It is the scale that impresses, a whole town given over to the guitar for more than a week, and recent winners such as Marko Topchii and Hao Yang have gone on to lead the field. And there is a quiet rightness to the setting. This castle-crowned stretch of the Rhine, the gorge just upriver, the Loreley rock and Heine's siren song, is the very landscape that fired nineteenth-century German Romanticism; and the Romantic guitar of Mertz and his contemporaries, gut-strung and songful in its day, belongs to exactly that world. To hear today's players in this setting is to hear the instrument in the scenery that shaped its Romantic voice.

If you play as well as listen, explore Johann Kaspar Mertz, master of the Romantic guitar in our repertoire finder, where you can hear each piece and find the sheet music.

The local table

This is Rhine and Moselle country, so eat regional and drink Riesling: Sauerbraten, the marinated pot roast, potato pancakes with apple sauce, and Flammkuchen, all washed down with the crisp white wines of the slopes on either side of the city. If you are here in autumn, look for Federweißer, the cloudy young wine of the harvest, and a glass on a terrace above the river is the classic way to end a concert night.

Fancy a guided taste? Food and wine tours in Koblenz →

While you're there

Ride the cable car across the Rhine to the great fortress of Ehrenbreitstein for the view down over the two rivers, then take a boat south into the Rhine Gorge, the UNESCO stretch where castle after castle looks down on the water and the Loreley rock rises above the bend. The finest of the castles is the Marksburg at Braubach, the only hill-castle on the Rhine never to have been destroyed, while up the Moselle valley the fairy-tale Burg Eltz, half an hour west, is one of the most beautiful in Germany. And for a musician there is a pilgrimage close at hand: Bonn, less than an hour down the Rhine, where the Beethoven-Haus preserves the room in which Beethoven was born.

Tours, tickets and day trips in Koblenz →

More guitar events in Germany: Anna-Amalia Competition for Young Guitarists · ARD International Music Competition (Guitar) · Hamburger Guitar Festival · Hanse Guitar Cup · Heinsberg Guitar Festival and Competition · International Competition for Young Guitarists Andrés Segovia (EGTA)

Also in June: Balaton Guitar Festival · Bale-Valle Armonica Guitar Competition · Baltic Guitar Days International Festival & Competition · Baltic Guitar Festival & Competition · CIGA - Alhambra International Guitar Competition · Concurso Internacional Levino Albano da Conceição

Listing data is compiled from official sources and can change each edition. Always confirm dates, deadlines and requirements on the organizer's official website before applying or booking travel. Spotted an error? See our terms or let us know via the About page.

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