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Photo: Stephan Rabold

With dance rhythms and exciting instrumental combinations – from piano trio to cor anglais quartet to viola ensemble – the members of the Berliner Philharmoniker bid farewell to their audience for the summer break. This also marked the end of the Berlin Phil Series, which made it possible to get together despite contact restrictions. After works by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Étienne Perruchon and Jean Françaix, tangos by Astor Piazzolla in a recording with the 12 Cellists formed an extraordinary concert finale.

Photo: Stephan Rabold

Orchestral and chamber music of the 1920s and 30s from Hungary, Russia and England: in the penultimate episode of the Berlin Phil Series, members of the Berliner Philharmoniker presented the diversity of Modernism. In addition, Béla Bartók and the jazz composer Chick Corea had a musical encounter in short pieces for vibraphone and piano, and Bartók’s orchestral suite The Miraculous Mandarin is presented in an archive recording. Shostakovich’s virtuosic and sardonic First Piano Concerto with the pianist Denis Matsuev and the Philharmoniker’s trumpeter Guillaume Jehl formed a spectacular conclusion.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

The music of the Baroque period represents a unique combination of tonal splendour and vibrant lightness. However, it is only occasionally performed in the everyday concert life of a symphony orchestra – and so this programme with solo concertos by Bach, Handel and Vivaldi is a particularly welcome rarity. The appeal of this episode of the Berlin Phil Series is further enhanced by the fact that members of the orchestra can be enjoyed here as soloists.

Photo: Stephan Rabold

Mozart’s wind serenade “Gran Partita” and Dvořák’s Serenade for Strings combine youthful temperament and compositional maturity, chamber music intimacy with sonorousness and the amusing character of the serenade tradition with the musical weight of symphonic conception. Kirill Petrenko included both works in the programme for this concert of the Berlin Phil Series with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker. With this serenade concert, Kirill Petrenko also concluded his first season as chief conductor of the orchestra.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

This episode of the Berlin Phil Series brought the familiar, the new and the unknown together in a captivating way. Schubert’s Octet for five strings and three winds, considered the founding work of this instrumental genre of chamber music, was programmed alongside a world premiere by Toshio Hosokawa and an almost forgotten piece for the same formation by Hugo Kaun. All three works were performed by one of the orchestra’s most venerable chamber music formations: the Philharmonic Octet Berlin.

Photo: Stephan Rabold

As 1st concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker for many years, Kirill Petrenko is the fourth chief conductor Daniel Stabrawa has worked with. In this new concert of the Berlin Phil Series, the musician performs the only violin concerto by his Polish compatriot Andrzej Panufnik and – alongside orchestral colleagues – a trio by Antonín Dvořák. A film featuring Stabrawa in interviews and concert excerpts completes the evening as a touching portrait of the musician. The programme also includes a performance of Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony from the concert archive, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

Three weeks after the European Concert, chief conductor Kirill Petrenko appeared again with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker in an otherwise empty Philharmonie. Debussy’s atmospheric, dream-like Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune was followed by the wild sounds of Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 1, whose borrowings from popular music were perceived as a provocation by contemporary audiences. The concert ended with the sensuous Verklärte Nacht, an early masterstroke by Arnold Schoenberg. “You can’t play it more beautifully than this” (rbbKulturradio).

Photo: Stephan Rabold

The new episode of the Berlin Phil series features fanfares, chorales and marches with brass players of the Berliner Philharmoniker and organist Sebastian Heidl. The selection includes works by Beethoven, Handel and Elgar as well as compositions from the distinguished French organ tradition. The charming combination of the church instrument with the colours of the symphony orchestra resounds at the end of the concert in the finale from Camille Saint-Saëns’s “Organ Symphony”. The conductor of the performance from the archive of the Digital Concert Hall was Zubin Mehta.

Photo: Monika Rittershaus

This episode of the Berlin Phil Series is a musical portrait of the city of Vienna. The concert features newly recorded chamber music works by Mozart and Beethoven as well as archive recordings of orchestral songs by Franz Schubert and Hugo Wolf. The chamber musicians include the two principal clarinets of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Wenzel Fuchs and Andreas Ottensamer who as Austrians, will guarantee an authentic Viennese colour. Fuchs can be heard in Mozart’s famous clarinet quintet, and Ottensamer in Beethoven’s lively “Gassenhauer Trio”.

Photo: Stephan Rabold

Music by American composers is on the programme for the second instalment of the Berlin Phil Series. In a range of chamber formations, Noah Bendix-Balgley, 1st concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and other members of the orchestra play pieces by George Gershwin, John Cage, and the composer Amy Beach, among others. Symphonic dances from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story are heard under the baton of chief conductor Kirill Petrenko, and his predecessor Sir Simon Rattle inspires the orchestra to a spectacular performance of Scott Bradley’s soundtrack to a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Photo: Sebastian Hänel

In a new concert series in which members of the Berliner Philharmoniker perform chamber music in the Digital Concert Hall, Emmanuel Pahud, Amihai Grosz and Marie-Pierre Langlamet start things off with French music from Rameau to Debussy for flute, viola and harp. In this way, the musicians will be able to maintain contact with each other and with their audiences even during the time of the corona crisis. The programme closes with a recording from 2009 of Debussy’s composition La Mer, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of their former chief conductor Claudio Abbado.