Kirill Petrenko conducts Schumann, Wagner and Brahms in Taipei
Expect unbridled delight at this tour concert by the Berliner Philharmoniker and their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko at the National Concert Hall in Taipei: classical music holds a special place in the hearts of the people of Taiwan, and the orchestra’s regular visits since 2005 are always a major event. This year’s programme features Brahms’s First Symphony, a favourite showpiece of the Philharmoniker, preceded by Schumann’s impassioned Manfred overture and Wagner’s enchanting Siegfried Idyll.
Designed in the classical Chinese style, the National Concert Hall in Taipei, which opened in 1987, is a twin building to the National Theatre, with which it frames the city’s cultural forum. Its modern interior can seat 2,000 people, but as the number of Philharmoniker fans far exceeds this capacity, the organiser is this year once again arranging for the concert to be broadcast on a screen in the forecourt of the concert hall. Every time they visit Taiwan, it is a special highlight for the orchestra members when they are greeted by the cheering outdoor audience after the concert.
Kirill Petrenko has chosen two works from his season-opening programme for the tour: Robert Schumann’s impassioned Manfred Overture, and Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, the performance of which he will be able to further refine with the Philharmoniker during the tour. As he explains in one of our interviews, the chief conductor’s flexible approach to tempo is based on the tradition of Fritz Steinbach, who worked in Meiningen with the composer himself on his symphonies.
New to this programme is the lyrical, Romantic Siegfried Idyll – a small-scale work with charming wind solos, which Richard Wagner presented to his wife Cosima in 1870 to celebrate her birthday and the birth of their son Siegfried.
Berliner Philharmoniker
Kirill Petrenko
© 2025 MNA/Berlin Phil Media GmbH
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Artists
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