Kirill Petrenko and Janine Jansen with Brahms’s Violin Concerto

“Scriabin’s music has broken away from the whole, it is a piece of the universe that pulsates,” wrote Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak in his autobiographical work Safe Conduct in 1931. Indeed, Scriabin’s Symphony No. 3 reveals a cosmic dimension that evokes unfathomable forces of nature and strives for vastness and transparency. The 1905 premiere at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris conducted by Arthur Nikisch, initially received mixed reviews from the press.

Today, Alexander Scriabin’s Third is one of his most popular symphonies. The work combines late Romantic opulence with a subjective symbolism inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas. Strongly contrasting emotions such as ponderousness, ecstasy, horror and wit lie close together; the three movements, which bear programmatic titles, flow seamlessly into one another. The composer’s idea here was that the creative spirit – like God – is capable of raising the world to a higher plane of existence. The symphony, subtitled Le divin poème (The Divine Poem), describes in its first two movements – Luttes (Struggles) and Voluptés (Delights) – an inner struggle that ends in the finale with the light-heartedness of divine play (Jeu Divin).

At the top of Janine Jansen’s wish list for her 2025/26 residency with the Philharmoniker was a performance of Johannes Brahms’s Violin Concerto. “It’s always a bit intimidating to play this work,” says Jansen, “but I have to put that thought to one side. I just think about everything I’ve already experienced with this concerto. I played it for the first time at the Utrecht Cathedral when I was sixteen, with a student orchestra and my father conducting. After that, I performed it again and again, and now, I am bringing all these experiences to my collaboration with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko.”

Berliner Philharmoniker

Kirill Petrenko

Janine Jansen