Although Anton Bruckner died while working on the finale of his Ninth Symphony, he left countless sketches behind. In a piece of detective work which took over 25 years, these sketches were joined together into a breathtaking whole by an international team of researchers. The completed symphony is now performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle.
There is a pandemonium of bizarre villains in this late-night concert with HK Gruber’s jazzy, cabaret-style piece Frankenstein!!. The performers include members of the the Berliner Philharmoniker and, not least, the composer himself.
Dmitri Shostakovich himself complained that his Fourth Symphony to suffer “grandiosomania” – a verdict that is certainly too hard, as the power and grandness of this work remains precarious, slipping time and again into the surreal. Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker explored the many layers of this work in September 2009.
The 300th Birthday of Frederick the Great provides the occasion for an artistic summit. It includes works from the court of the music-loving monarch, interpreted by two leading early music ensembles: the Berliner Barock Solisten and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Moreover, the concert features readings by star actors Burghart Klaußner and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
At his debut with the Philharmoniker in January 2010, Tugan Sokhiev appeared to one critic as “the perfect blend of Christian Thielemann, Gustavo Dudamel and the Russian school.” He now performs Franz Liszt’s First Piano Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Boris Berezovsky.
If you live in the UK, you have as many as three opportunities in the new season to experience the Berliner Philharmoniker live in a cinema near you.