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Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Hector Berlioz wrote countless love letters to actress Harriet Smithson – none were ever answered. The Symphonie fantastique became the composer’s outlet: the depiction of an extreme love drama in which the lover is murdered and the murderer is executed. The conductor of the spectacular score here is Daniel Barenboim. The programme also includes the flute concertos by Ferruccio Busoni and Jacques Ibert – captivating music which is dynamic, transparent and surprising. The soloist is Emmanuel Pahud, principal flute of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Photo: Stephan Rabold

With this programme we commemorate Max Bruch, the 100th anniversary of whose death is remembered in 2020. Our 1st concertmaster, Noah Bendix-Balgley, is the soloist in this performance of Bruch’s First Violin Concerto with the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Marek Janowski. With its yearning opening movement and sparkling finale, this work became the composer’s most popular work. The second part of the concert is dedicated to Johannes Brahms, a contemporary of Bruch. His Serenade No. 2 is characterised by the dark, warm sound typical of Brahms and is considered a milestone on the composer’s path to the symphony.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Despite the corona crisis, the traditional European Concert was still able to take place almost 30 years after its inception. Members of the orchestra performed under the baton of chief conductor Kirill Petrenko in an otherwise empty Philharmonie. After works by Arvo Pärt, György Ligeti and Samuel Barber, Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was performed in a version for chamber orchestra with soprano Christiane Karg. “The Philharmoniker soloists exude dedication – and an inexhaustible world opens up in miniature” (Tagesspiegel).

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

In this concert, Kirill Petrenko made his last appearance with the Berliner Philharmoniker before taking up office as their chief conductor. First, soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja showed how much virtuosity and expressive variety there is in Arnold Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto. Then came Tchaikovsky’s passionate Fifth Symphony in a performance full of power and dedication, “with a final passage like a casting out of devils .... The hall was completely breathless with enthusiasm and anticipation of what the future holds” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Witold Lutosławski’s captivating Concerto for Orchestra combines the acerbic power of traditional Polish folk music with ingenious, pioneering construction. A charming contrast is formed by Johannes Brahms’ joyous Second Symphony, written during a holiday at the Wörthersee in which, according to the composer, “The melodies fly so thick here that you have to be careful not to step on one”. The conductor for this concert is Paavo Järvi.

Photo: Kai Bienert

Henrik Albrecht’s children’s opera Ritter Parceval deals with the fascinating question of how a little boy becomes a knight. Especially when no-one believes he has what it takes to be a hero. Not his own overprotective mother Herzeloyde, the evil magician Klingsor or the virtuous Gurnemanz. In an end result that is moving, fascinating and daring, Albrecht sets the development of the young Parceval to music based on motifs from Richard Wagner.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Simon Rattle is one of the outstanding Haydn conductors of our time. To open his last season as chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker, he presents Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, which combines groundbreaking harmonies, humorous tone painting and powerful choruses to form a spectacular cosmic panorama. The acclaimed performance showed all the musical facets of the work: its power as well as its delicate details.

Photo: Ramella & Giannese

Two visions of death that could not be more different: The old Richard Strauss looks toward his death confidently and calmly with his Vier letzte Lieder – soloist: Camilla Nylund. In his Fourth Symphony, Peter Tchaikovsky reflects uneasily with high emotional pressure an existential crisis that drove him to attempt suicide. With this concert from May 2015, conductor Gianandrea Noseda made his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

Photo: Patrice Nin

Both forward-looking and intelligible to all – that’s what music was intended to be in the Soviet Union. In this concert from December 2014 you can hear works that accord ingeniously with this challenging mission: Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto, with Vadim Gluzman as the soloist, and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, probably his most popular one. The conductor is Tugan Sokhiev, music director of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre.

The celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the Chamber Music Hall of the Philharmonie in Berlin had many highlights. One of which was undoubtedly an appearance by Isabel Karajan, eldest daughter of Herbert von Karajan. She has made an outstanding name for herself as an actress and gave a demonstration of her skills and versatility for this anniversary as the narrator in Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat.

In a joint benefit concert in April 2011, the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Staatskapelle Berlin commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl reactor disaster. This day of remembrance was all the more relevant given the nuclear disaster in Fukushima just a few weeks previously. The concert, with works by Dmitri Shostakovitch, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Tōru Takemitsu, was conducted by Andrey Boreyko.

Shostakovitch’s 14th Symphony is a highly unusual work. With frugal musical forces, it takes death as its theme. It forgoes all pathos yet is all the more haunting because of this. In contrast, this concert with Neeme Järvi also includes Richard Stauss’s Don Juan and Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, compositions which also deal with death, however in both cases it is combined with a highly luxurious orchestration.

With two debuts in one evening, this concert from October 2010 had the up-and-coming generation of musicians at its heart. As the main work of the evening, Andris Nelsons conducted Dmitri Shostakovitch’s Eighth Symphony – according to one review, a “sensational concert” and a “brilliant debut”. No less praise was there for Baiba Skride’s “simple and harmonious” interpretation as the soloist in Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto.

The subtle yet extravagant outpourings of beauty of his music have made Frédéric Chopin perhaps the most popular piano composer of all. In this recording from 2009, Daniel Barenboim is the soloist in both of Chopin’s piano concertos: critics praised the performance for the “magic of the unrepeatable moment”. The concert is conducted by Asher Fisch.