Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe: German Culture Takes Over New York This October

October in New York just got a whole lot more interesting. The German Consulate General New York has dropped its fall newsletter, and the month is packed with German culture across the city, from a thundering all-Liszt piano night at Carnegie Hall to a one-man Faust performed in German with English subtitles. Here is your rundown.

Liszt Roars Back at Carnegie Hall

The standout of the month has to be Transcendante: Boris Cepeda, piano, set for October 15 at 7:30 PM in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Street. Cepeda, a German-Ecuadorian Steinway Artist who made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2022, takes on an all-Franz Liszt program that pulls no punches: La Campanella, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Mazeppa, and the Rhapsodie espagnole, plus Liszt’s own transcriptions of Schubert and Wagner, closing with Isoldens Liebestod. Presented by the European Piano Academy of Atlanta, it is the kind of barnstorming recital that reminds you why Liszt was the original rock star of the keyboard.

Film and Stage Nights

Film fans get two strong options. The 14th Annual Chelsea Film Festival runs October 14-18, and the East Coast premiere of TENEZ screens October 16 as part of Program #3: Who Are We? The film follows Leo, a young tennis player, as he faces his former abusive coach before a big match and spirals between the court and the gambling halls. Festival programmers are buzzing about it, and viewers keeping an eye on what is coming to streaming and screens this season will find plenty to chew on here.

On October 11, the free monthly online KINO! Film Salon returns, a discussion group about German film produced by Telescope Film and the German Film Office. And on stage, October 16-17 brings Berlin Exile(s), a workshop performance of a new play built from the writings and music of German artists who lived through displacement. Halloween weekend closes the theatrical side of the calendar with Faust – Parts I and II at the United Solo Festival at Theatre Row on October 31: Austrian actor Max Pfnur plays every role himself, in German with English subtitles, in the solo production that took the jury prize at the Heidelberg Theatre Awards.

Literature and Art Round Out the Month

The Festival Neue Literatur returns with two evenings of transatlantic conversation. On October 26, “Intimate Thresholds: Identity and Longing” pairs Laura Vogt with Nicole Krauss to discuss the novels Woman, Idle and To Be a Man, moderated by Tess Lewis. The next night, October 27, “Guests and Ghosts” brings together Michael Lentz, Tanja Paar, Laura Vogt, and Jonas Hassen Khemiri, moderated by Alta Price, with the 2026 Friedrich Ulfers Prize presented to Peter Wortsman and a laudation by Priska Juschka.

On the gallery side, Tammam Azzam: A Horizon Remains runs September 13 through December 6, the first solo New York show and first institutional US presentation for the Syrian-German artist. Between the exhibition’s long run and the stacked October calendar, the month is proof that German culture in New York is not a niche interest, it is one of the liveliest scenes in town right now. Mark the dates, grab your tickets early for Carnegie Hall, and don’t sleep on the festival premieres, the kind that become the films everyone talks about next year.