Live concerts

Photo: Felix Broede

Igor Levit describes Beethoven’s radiant E flat major concerto as a work that “makes you really happy”. Following Levit’s debut with the orchestra at the 2015 Easter Festival in Baden-Baden, he now appears for the first time with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Philharmonie Berlin under the baton of Paavo Järvi. Another item on the programme is Prokofiev’s Symphony in E flat minor. Its opus number – a reference to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 111 – reflects Prokofiev’s admiration for the First Viennese School composer.

Photo: Felix Broede

Igor Levit describes Beethoven’s radiant E flat major concerto as a work that “makes you really happy”. Following Levit’s debut with the orchestra at the 2015 Easter Festival in Baden-Baden, he now appears for the first time with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the Philharmonie Berlin under the baton of Paavo Järvi. Another item on the programme is Prokofiev’s Symphony in E flat minor. Its opus number – a reference to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 111 – reflects Prokofiev’s admiration for the First Viennese School composer.

With its its beguiling, heartfelt melodies, its captivating dance-like rhythms and its highly virtuosic solo part, Tchaikovsky’s opus 35 is considered the epitome of the Romantic violin concerto. Ideal for a violinist like Lisa Batiashvili, who – according to the Guardian – knows how to interpret this piece in an intense, radiant and heartfelt way. Semyon Bychkov, a long-standing associate of the Berliner Philharmoniker, also conducts Antonín Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony.

Photo: Chris Christodoulou

Like the opera Eugene Onegin, which he composed five years earlier, Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa is also based on a poem by Alexander Pushkin. The work tells the story of the tragic life and loves of a Ukrainian Cossack commander against the background of events during the reign of Peter the Great. After the opera is heard at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden, the passionate, dramatic score will be brought to life by an outstanding ensemble of singers at the Philharmonie Berlin.

Photo: Sooni Taraporevala

They belonged to different stylistic periods but nevertheless had a great deal in common: Olivier Messiaen and Anton Bruckner numbered among the leading organists of their day, and both were deeply rooted in the Catholic faith, which considerably influenced their works. Zubin Mehta combines Messiaen’s Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, an impressive musical memorial to the dead of both world wars, with Anton Bruckner’s monumental Ninth Symphony. In this work, Bruckner not only sums up his symphonic oeuvre but also bids farewell to this world in a very personal way.

Photo: Dario Acosta

One would never get the idea that virtuosity could be an end in itself with Yefim Bronfman, who has been a world-class pianist for many years. His artistry is always devoted to the work itself – regardless of whether he launches into a hard-hitting thunderstorm of chords or caresses delicate poetic tableaus out of the keys. “With Brahms I think of natural landscapes, mountains, green valleys and beautiful panoramas, of incredible grandeur,” Bronfman says about the composer, whose First Piano Concerto he plays at these concerts.

Photo: LUCERNE FESTIVAL/ Priska Ketterer

Kirill Petrenko’s interpretation of music by Mozart will be heard together with Tchaikovsky’s Suite No. 3 during this concert, first in Berlin and afterwards at the European Concert. The annual anniversary concert of the Berliner Philharmoniker takes place at the Sagrada Família in Barcelona for the first time in 2021, with a selection of works tailor-made for the sacred location, including the “Coronation” Mass, the Ave verum and the motet “Exsultate, jubilate”. The Catalan choral society Orfeó Català, founded in 1891, makes its debut with the orchestra at these concerts.

Photo: LUCERNE FESTIVAL/ Priska Ketterer

At 16,000 kilometres, Philipp Eversheim had the longest journey. The flutist from Australia was one of the approximately 90 music-loving amateurs who had qualified to participate in the BE PHIL Orchestra in 2018. This project of the Education Programme gave musicians from 30 countries the unique experience of performing Brahms’s First Symphony under Sir Simon Rattle. A highly emotional event for both the participants and the audience. This season there will be a revival of the BE PHIL Orchestra – with Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony and chief conductor Kirill Petrenko at the podium.

Photo: Stephan Rabold

“Each of Gustav Mahler’s symphonies has a different philosophy, builds a different world,” Kirill Petrenko says in an interview for the Digital Concert Hall. After the Fourth and the Sixth, he now conducts the Ninth, the composer’s last completed symphony, with the Berliner Philharmoniker. A work which makes a radical break with tradition, points the way to modernism and thus pushes open the door to a different world. Mahler conceived the cosmos of this work as fragile, fragmentary and episodic – a grand farewell to youth, love, life.

It is “a masterpiece, a musical volcano that erupts for sixty minutes of tragic intensity and leaves us with only one desire: to hear it again.” That is how Zoltán Kodály described Béla Bartók’s only opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. Composed in 1911, the one-act work is a brilliantly orchestrated symbolic psychological drama that takes us deep into the emotional world of the fin de siècle. “What do you see?” Bluebeard asks his bride Judith, who wants to open the seven doors of the Duke’s past. Susanna Mälkki conducts this musical psychoanalysis, which makes listeners shudder.

Sir Simon Rattle returns to the podium of the Berliner Philharmoniker with a major work by his countryman Edward Elgar. The Dream of Gerontius describes the journey of the soul of a dead man on its way to the next world. The work was composed in 1900, one year after Sigmund Freud published his epochal The Interpretation of Dreams. The dream as the gateway to the subconscious. In Elgar’s version, which is deeply indebted to the fin de siècle, the dream appears in the form of a comforting meditation on death.

The early 20th century was not only influenced by avant-garde concepts but was also characterized by an unbridled passion for intoxicating sounds. Alan Gilbert, chief conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, demonstrates that in this programme. We can almost feel the gentle breeze that Anton Webern evokes in his impressionist early work Im Sommerwind (In the Summer Wind). And Arnold Schoenberg clearly took great pleasure in intensifying the colours of Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1, drawing on all the orchestra’s resources. Unsuk Chin’s iridescent, sensuous Piano Concerto will be heard between the two works, with Sunwook Kim as soloist.

“Conducting is a good profession to grow old in, because it’s always a challenge, and you need challenges when you get older,” said Herbert Blomstedt, born in 1927, who is continuing his long-standing collaboration with the Berliner Philharmoniker with undiminished energy and vitality. On this programme Sibelius’s dark, mist-shrouded Fourth Symphony is contrasted with Brahms’s Third. Between them, a rarity will be heard: the solemn Intermezzo from the cantata Sången (The Song), composed in 1926 by the Swedish late Romantic composer Wilhelm Stenhammar.

Jean-Christophe Spinosi’s artistic home is music of the 17th and 18th centuries. He also appears as an opera conductor, with acclaimed interpretations of works by Mozart and Rossini. For his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker Spinosi has put together a varied programme including two works from the Baroque period, a symphony from the Viennese Classical School and Romantic bel canto. Philippe Jaroussky is also at home in this repertoire and contributes arias by Vivaldi and Rossini in his brilliant countertenor.

Photo: Simon Pauly

At his debut with the orchestra in March of 2019 listeners could experience the presence, physicality and enthusiasm with which multi-percussionist Martin Grubinger executed the solo part in Peter Eötvös’s percussion concerto Speaking Drums. He virtuosically elicited a wealth of timbres from his arsenal of instruments – from eruptive cascades of sound to delicate bell tones. At the close of the concert season in the Waldbühne the percussion star returns to the Berliner Philharmoniker: pure rhythm under the stars.