Kirill Petrenko in conversation with Martin Menking (16 min.)

The online festival “The Golden Twenties” in February 2021 was dedicated to the music of the 1920s. The programmes showed how much there is to discover in Kurt Weill’s work beyond the famous Threepenny Opera. Kirill Petrenko opened the concert with the unusually densely orchestrated and imaginative First Symphony, an early work by the composer. The second half of the concert featured a performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Neoclassical opera oratorio Oedipus Rex. In this conversation with Martin Menking, cellist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Kirill Petrenko describes his view of both works and the atmosphere in Berlin in the 1920s, and explains how starkly the Berlin Weill differs from the American Weill, who enjoyed success in Hollywood and on Broadway.