Live concerts

The orchestral songs by Richard Strauss are gems in which the intimacy of the Lied is combined with virtuoso mastery of the orchestral sound. Besides the Strauss songs, Conductor Manfred Honeck and baritone Matthias Goerne, who is in demand around the world, will present Schubert Lieder in new orchestra arrangements. On the second half of the concert, you can hear Dvořák’s Eighth, a symphony which can be described as “in good spirits” – quite a rarity in the late Romantic era.

They are among the most expressive symphonic works ever: Mahler’s Lied von der Erde and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. An exciting conceptual parallel can be drawn by juxtaposing them: in both cases, fragile folksy gaiety suddenly changes into sheer despair. Besides Bernard Haitink, who is especially highly esteemed as a Mahler interpreter, you can experience tenor Christian Elsner and baritone Christian Gerhaher.

Russian music should be melancholy and voluminous – or at least that’s the cliché. Tugan Sokhiev, Music Director of the Bolshoi Theatre, provides proof of the contrary. Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade develops oriental charm and impressionist richness of colour, while a tongue in cheek charm repeatedly shines through in Rachmaninoff’s Paganini Variations, regardless of their tremendous virtuosity. Nikolai Lugansky will debut as piano soloist with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Mozart’s qualities as a music dramatist also manifest themselves in his Prague Symphony, whose operatic contrasts conjure up the world of Don Giovanni and of Figaro time and again. In addition, conductor Iván Fischer will present selected Mozart arias with soprano Christiane Karg. This is preceded by a work by Béla Bartók that is both visionary and breath-taking: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta in the original instrumentation.

Brilliant, but non-sensuous: that is many concertgoers’ opinion about the music of Arnold Schönberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This concert, in which Simon Rattle presents orchestral pieces by the three composers, shows just how wrong they are: virtuoso music of overwhelming expressiveness. One important inspiration for Schönberg’s circle was Johannes Brahms, whose sun-drenched Second Symphony ends the concert.

Modern music of the fleet-footed type characterises the beginning of this concert: with Béla Bartók’s youthfully animated Second Violin Concerto and the ingenious, jazzy minimalism of John Adams. The main symphonic work of the evening is a contrast: Tchaikovsky’s Fourth with its powerful world-weary sounds. Alan Gilbert conducts, and the soloist is the violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann.

After a break of almost ten years, Gidon Kremer is returning to the Berliner Philharmoniker. The programme starts with Sofia Gubaidulina’s violin concerto In tempus praesens, in which an ethereal and filigree solo part excitingly encounters an energetic orchestral sound. Conductor and Bruckner specialist Christian Thielemann will then present the composer’s Mass in f minor, a monumental work audibly inspired by Beethoven’s Missa solemnis.

Numerous times the enchanting soprano Barbara Hannigan together with Simon Rattle has already presented musical discoveries that are impressive for both their modernity and their intense sensuality. This Late Night concert consists of the song cycle Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil by Gérard Grisey, a fragile, atmospheric music full of unworldly melancholy.

It’s always a source of celebration for friends of Bruckner when Christian Thielemann conducts the composer. Not many others have been given the gift to make the dark glow and the broad arches of this music resound so impressively. At this concert, Thielemann will interpret Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony, which once marked his breakthrough as a composer. In addition, we encounter Rudolf Buchbinder as the soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

It is almost a miniature opera: the first act of Richard Wagner’s Walküre, in which Siegmund, Sieglinde and Hunding encounter each other in tense and exciting scenes. Simon Rattle will present this musical chamber play with a first-class ensemble of singers experienced in Bayreuth, consisting of Eva-Maria Westbroek, Simon O’Neill and John Tomlinson. The evening will kick off with Wagner’s gossamer Siegfried Idyll.

He is “the most astounding young pianist of our age”, the London Times wrote when Daniil Trifonov presented his first Rachmaninoff recording. On New Year’s Eve, Trifonov will interpret the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 3: many consider it the most difficult piano concerto of all time. Simon Rattle will also present Antonín Dvořák’s virtuoso Slavonic Dances and will lead us into the world of British humour with orchestra pieces from William Walton’s Façade.

Verdi’s Requiem is without comparison in music history. The Italian opera composer did not want to convey otherworldly transcendence in it, but rather an emotional assault, as in his great stage works. The merging of the Christian message and theatrical intensity succeeded as in no other setting of the requiem. Riccardo Chailly, music director of La Scala in Milan, will present the work with an exclusive ensemble of singers.

A substantial jubilee shapes this year’s guest concert by the National Youth Orchestra: the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. Besides Felix Mendelssohn’s splendid Reformation Symphony and Bach’s graceful Orchestral Suite No. 3, two newer works reflecting on the occasion can also be heard. As a special bonus, the German National Youth Ballet will perform. Alexander Shelley conducts; John Neumeier is one of the choreographers.

Béla Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto is one of the most touching of the 20th century. The gravely ill composer found his way to a tone for which he had not previously been known: more melodic, softer, almost religious. András Schiff, a favourite of the Berlin audience and closely bound to Bartók through his shared Hungarian origin, will interpret the work with Herbert Blomstedt, who will conduct Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony after the interval.

Maria Magdalena is one of the most fascinating female figures in the Bible. In The Gospel According to the Other Mary, composer John Adams and librettist Peter Sellars recount the Passion of Christ from her perspective. Just as multi-faceted as the story is Adams’s irresistible music, in which minimalism is mixed with imaginative orchestration and jazzy verve. Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker.

The climax of this concert with Sir Simon Rattle is Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which stands out among the composer’s monumental works with a sunny amiability. The evening opens with the premiere of a short piece by Wolfgang Rihm, followed by György Ligeti’s violin concerto, a work that impresses soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja with its “colourful, … sometimes flickering and sometimes floating auditory impression”.

György Ligeti had a good sense of humour. The best proof of that is his ludicrous opera Le Grand Macabre, which Sir Simon Rattle will perform with an illustrious ensemble of singers. The work is a grotesque parable about war, enriched with elements from the theatre of the absurd, the mediaeval dance of death and a wild carnival. As for earlier operatic projects of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Peter Sellars was enlisted as the director.

Zubin Mehta and Pinchas Zukerman Edward Elgar found his violin concerto “awfully emotional – too emotional! But I love it!” And in fact this is a work that wins you over spontaneously with its late romantic warmth and contemplative melancholy. Soloist Pinchas Zukerman returns with it to the Berliner Philharmoniker after more than ten years. Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, which Zubin Mehta conducts to conclude the evening, is at least as soulful.

Béla Bartók’s only opera Bluebeard’s Castle sounds enigmatic and dark. This is a spectral psychological drama, clad in an impressionist music rich in allusions. The vocal soloists at this performance with Simon Rattle are Rinat Shaham and Gábor Bretz. As a counterpoint there is – with Emanuel Ax as soloist – a new piano concerto by HK Gruber, whose style is characterised by subtle wit and jazzy swing.

Meet the next chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker! On 21 June 2015, the orchestra voted by a large majority for Kirill Petrenko to succeed Simon Rattle; the conductor will be the guest at a Philharmonic concert for the first time since his election. Besides a piece by John Adams, you will be able to hear two works of the core symphonic repertoire: Mozart’s radiant and festive Haffner Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique, which heralds existential desperation.

In Puccini’s Tosca, moments full of love and intimacy alternate in breathtaking tempo with those of jealousy, hate and sadistic brutality. Puccini traces this range of feelings in a musical language that is simultaneously psychologising and breathtakingly beautiful. The title role in this performance with Simon Rattle will be sung by Kristīne Opolais, who is acclaimed as a Puccini interpreter on the great opera stages from Vienna to New York.

Three composers, three distinct musical languages: that’s on offer on this programme with Mariss Jansons. Thus in Jean Sibelius’s First Symphony, his characteristic Nordic idiom is already unmistakeable. Mozart’s Symphony No. 33, on the other hand, shows the depth of feeling and otherworldly beauty that make this composer so unique. And finally Béla Bartók with The Miraculous Mandarin: a rare fusion of uncompromising modernity and sensuousness of sound.

Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker have already performed Bruckner’s Seventh and Ninth Symphonies to great acclaim. With the Eighth there follows the composer’s most extensive work. It acquires its tremendous energy from the interplay of wave-like escalations – the piling up of monumental blocks of sound and falling back into melancholy brooding. The evening will open with a new short work by Simon Holt.

Richard Strauss often came in for caustic criticism for his innovative music. He traces these conflicts in his tone poem Ein Heldenleben: biting, original, with an opulent orchestra sound. Dmitri Shostakovich’s battles in the dictatorship under Stalin were even more existential. Here too, there is an echo of this in the composer’s music, including in the First Cello Concerto – which can be heard here with Gautier Capuçon as the soloist. Semyon Bychkov conducts.

Sergei Rachmaninov was actually a great melancholic – yet his Fourth Piano Concerto is colourful and spontaneous. Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes will interpret the work together with Andrés Orozco-Estrada. The music director of the hr-Sinfonieorchester and the Houston Symphony debuts on this evening with the Berliner Philharmoniker. The virtuoso programme will also present Richard Strauss’s Macbeth and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

“Simon Rattle and friends”: that’s how one could describe this concert. The composer Thomas Adès, whose Dances from “Powder Her Face” we hear here, and Imogen Cooper, the soloist in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25, have both been artistic associates for many years. One could say the same about Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, which Rattle has conducted in Berlin repeatedly, including in 2003 at the first dance project of the Philharmoniker’s Education Programme.

Antonín Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, composed in New York, presents itself as colourful, yearning, with a somewhat exotic touch – an inspired fusion of American impressions and symphonic music. In an exciting juxtaposition, Gustavo Dudamel will also conduct John Adams’s City Noir. Here too there is a fascinating mixture of styles, this time between classical music and jazz of the 1940s and 1950s.

The press described Joyce DiDonato’s Philharmonic debut in Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust as “ravishingly nuanced” and “angelic”. Now the charming singer can be experienced as a Berlioz interpreter again when she addresses the delicate expressivity of the cantata La Mort de Cléopâtre. Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin will also present Ravel’s delightful suite Ma Mère l’Oye and Stravinsky’s revolutionary ballet music The Firebird.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

To sing together, to awaken the desire to make music – that is the aim of our Education Programme’s Vocal Heroes” project. To this end, Vocal Heroes choirs for children and youths have been founded all over Berlin. Conducted by Simon Rattle, they will now present Von der Erde bis zum Mond, a new children’s opera by Andrew Norman – a fanciful young composer who in his own words loves surprising action such as we are familiar with from television series and video games.

Rarely is classical music as cheerful as in the serenades of the 18th century. Simon Rattle shows at this concert how ingeniously the genre was taken up in the late romantic era. Thus, for instance, Antonín Dvořák expanded traditional forms in his wind serenade to include Bohemian colours. Johannes Brahms, whose Serenade No. 2 has almost symphonic dimensions, went even one step further. There is also a new work by Mark-Anthony Turnage.

The orchestral music from Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen is ideal for a concert at Berlin’s Waldbühne. Particularly with such a dynamic conductor as Gustavo Dudamel, pieces like the Ride of the Valkyries develop an impact that reaches even the very last rows of the enormous auditorium. Like Wagner’s opera cycle, Robert Schumann’s Third Symphony leads us to the Rhine, inspiring the composer to vibrating and sonorous music.