The Berliner Philharmoniker at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden

We start with Robert Carsen’s production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute with which the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle opened the first Easter Festival in 2013. In the main roles, Dimitry Ivashchenko as Sarastro, Pavol Breslik as Tamino, Kate Royal as Pamina and Michael Nagy as Papageno impress with their singing and acting.

In addition to chamber music and education projects, the wide-ranging festival programme presented annually by the Berliner Philharmoniker in Baden-Baden also included concerts featuring big names. In 2016 for example, Yo-Yo Ma made his instrument sing enchantingly in Robert Schumann’s Cello Concerto, and in 2017, Lisa Batiashvili delighted audiences with her nuanced interpretation of Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto.

In 2019, the Berliner Philharmoniker appointed Kirill Petrenko, a noted opera specialist, as their chief conductor. Before turning to the stage works of Richard Strauss, he conducted Iolanta, Mazeppa and The Queen of Spades with the orchestra – three operas by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose music is particularly close to his heart. The performance of The Queen of Spades was an outstanding success, not least because with Kirill Petrenko, “the singers and the marvellous Slovak Philharmonic Choir were in the best of hands” (Süddeutsche Zeitung).

The end of an era also marks a new beginning, which in turn closes a circle: from 2026, the Berliner Philharmoniker will return to Salzburg, the place where Herbert von Karajan launched the Easter Festival in 1967.