Classical Concerts in

Berlin

Guest performance Walking Beauty

Guest performance

Lunch concert

You can simply go to a concert at the Philharmonie, spontaneously, during your lunch break – and with free admission: every Wednesday at 13:00 between September and June. The programme lasts 40 to 50 minutes: chamber music, piano works or a percussion duo – everything from Tchaikovsky to tango. Members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Karajan Academy regularly perform, as well as guests from the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, the Staatskapelle Berlin and the Berlin music conservatories. As can be expected at a lunch concert, catering is available from 12 noon until shortly before the concert begins.

JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET

According to Jörg Widmann, Beethoven’s Opus 130 represents the “string quartet of string quartets.” His own Eighth and Tenth Quartets were written in response to the Viennese master’s late work, in particular its famous slow movement, titled “Cavatina.” The New York–based Juilliard String Quartet frames Widmann’s “Beethoven Studies” with their historical model, including both its traditional version and the Grosse Fuge, the work’s original finale.

(No Title)

Explaining and performing the essence of music.

Guest performance

Daniel Harding conducts Holst’s “Planets”

With Gustav Holst’s atmospheric 1916 orchestral suite The Planets, Daniel Harding embarks on a cosmic musical journey through our solar system. Each of the seven planets has its own musical character, from rugged Mars to mystical Neptune. Holst was greatly inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, which oscillate intriguingly between late Romanticism and Modernism. Completing the programme, Brett Dean’s Komarov’s Fall was commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2006 as a musical “asteroid” to Holst’s Planets.

musica reanimata – Gesprächskonzert

Stefan Wolpe was forced to flee Berlin after the National Socialists came to power, as he had publicly positioned himself against the Nazis as a convinced communist and artistic director of the agitprop theater “Truppe 31”. After an odyssey via Prague, Zurich and Vienna, where he took composition lessons with Anton Webern, he emigrated to Palestine with his partner, the Romanian pianist Irma Schoenberg. In Jerusalem, Irma was able to teach piano at the newly founded conservatory and Stefan also received a position as a composition teacher in 1935. His students there included Herbert Brün, Chaim Alexander and Wolf Rosenberg, who had emigrated to Palestine with his family in 1936. We will hear works by Wolpe from the Jerusalem period as well as early piano works by Wolf Rosenberg and the 2nd String Quartet, played by pianist Angelika Nebel and the Seneca Quartet. Pamela Rosenberg, the composer's widow, will be the guest of the evening.In cooperation with musica reanimata – Förderverein zur Wiederentdeckung NS-verfolgter Komponisten und ihrer Werke e.V.

Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin

In their first joint programme, Akamus and the award-winning Basel vocal ensemble Voces Suaves present musical highlights from the generation of German composers before Johann Sebastian Bach and thus the impressive musical world into which he was born. The programme includes works by the extended Bach family as well as by composers who are largely unknown today and who preceded the later Thomaskantor in his important positions in Mühlhausen, Weimar and Leipzig. From the oeuvre of Johann Sebastian Bach, the double-choir motet ‘Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf’ will be performed..

Guest performance

Klavierabend

Expedition Tirili

For our "Expedition TIRILI" we usually travel light and without an elaborate stage set to the daycare centres of Berlin and Brandenburg. Now the "Expedition TIRILI" is also making a stop in the rank foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a few play dates and invites you to experience the sounds on the sand-coloured carpet and on brightly coloured seat cushions. Children are a great audience: open, curious, enthusiastic. They miss neither curtain nor orchestra pit and have no fixed idea of how an audience should behave. They are born explorers. And two musicians accompany them on their musical-theatrical voyage of discovery. Together they ask themselves: How are sounds created? What is music made of? Who or what is this mysterious TIRILI? For "Expedition TIRILI" we worked together with children from the Kastanienallee day-care centre in cooperation with TUKI. In the run-up, we experimented with sounds and themes in the nursery. This process flowed into the development of the production.

Takt auf, Takt ab! Kinderkonzert 3

Music is shaped not only by diverse tones and melodies but also by incredibly versatile rhythms and tempos. From spirited to melancholic, slow to fast, we explore the rhythmic variety in music. Clap, sneak, and dance along in the children's concert Takt auf, Takt ab!

“Ausklang” (Finale) Daniel Harding conducts Holst’s “Planets”

Welcome to the second instalment of our new series Ausklang! Each time, you can experience a short programme with a single orchestral work – but one that has it all. This time it’s Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets: a musical journey through our solar system, conducted by Daniel Harding. Each of the seven planets has its own musical character, from rugged Mars to mystical Neptune. Unusual orchestral effects are employed, inspiring many subsequent film music composers. After the concert, we invite you to enjoy a free drink in the foyer.

William Forsythe

Forsythe is a legendary choreographer, revered worldwide as one of the most creative innovators of the ballet tradition. Since the 1970s, he has revolutionised dance by intelligently developing academic ballet in a way that frees the human body from its predetermined corset and broadens choreographic expression in unprecedented ways. Many of William Forsythe’s virtuoso compositions have long become modern classics. In this homage, the Staatsballett will perform three groundbreaking pieces by the American choreographer. Approximate Sonata 2016 is a series of pas de deux, offering the performers the opportunity to mutually craft finely differentiated nuances within a choreographic structure whose forms are frequently difficult to sustain. The performers have a balanced agency in determining the dynamic outcome of these forms, striving to accommodate the choices the other is making in order to advance each other’s intentions. For all the hazardous torrent of dancers moving relentlessly around metal tables, One Flat Thing, reproduced (2000) is actually a purposeful chapter in ongoing research into the visual distribution of contrapuntal balletic structure. The work is set up as a linked ‹machinery› that is created through the interaction of three systems of organization: numerous individual movement themes, a dense system of distributed cueing and complex alignments of forms and/or movement flow. Although the dancer’s field of action is seriously delimited, the unyielding maze of tables also offers the unusual possibility of composing interrelated action on three levels. Blake Works I , staged for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2016, was the first work created in the classical idiom after a hiatus from ballet of more than 17 years. The work deploys a distinctly historical approach to the genre, versus the analytical approach used in a majority of the previous ballet oriented works. Blake Works I radiates an affection for the language of ballet, and even revives several iconic ...

BEN LAMAR GAY

Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and lyricist Ben LaMar Gay creates brilliant electro-acoustic collages in which sound, color, and space interact through the prism of folklore. Building on an improvisational foundation, his music expands beyond genre limits. At the Pierre Boulez Saal, he will lead an ensemble of his international family of collaborators in a program that includes new compositions from his ongoing series The Manipulation of Lines and Breff.

William Forsythe

Forsythe is a legendary choreographer, revered worldwide as one of the most creative innovators of the ballet tradition. Since the 1970s, he has revolutionised dance by intelligently developing academic ballet in a way that frees the human body from its predetermined corset and broadens choreographic expression in unprecedented ways. Many of William Forsythe’s virtuoso compositions have long become modern classics. In this homage, the Staatsballett will perform three groundbreaking pieces by the American choreographer. Approximate Sonata 2016 is a series of pas de deux, offering the performers the opportunity to mutually craft finely differentiated nuances within a choreographic structure whose forms are frequently difficult to sustain. The performers have a balanced agency in determining the dynamic outcome of these forms, striving to accommodate the choices the other is making in order to advance each other’s intentions. For all the hazardous torrent of dancers moving relentlessly around metal tables, One Flat Thing, reproduced (2000) is actually a purposeful chapter in ongoing research into the visual distribution of contrapuntal balletic structure. The work is set up as a linked ‹machinery› that is created through the interaction of three systems of organization: numerous individual movement themes, a dense system of distributed cueing and complex alignments of forms and/or movement flow. Although the dancer’s field of action is seriously delimited, the unyielding maze of tables also offers the unusual possibility of composing interrelated action on three levels. Blake Works I , staged for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2016, was the first work created in the classical idiom after a hiatus from ballet of more than 17 years. The work deploys a distinctly historical approach to the genre, versus the analytical approach used in a majority of the previous ballet oriented works. Blake Works I radiates an affection for the language of ballet, and even revives several iconic ...

Guest performance Viva el Tango

Guest performance Viva el Tango

Kammermusik des Konzerthausorchesters

Mozart's Hoffmeister Quartet was written a year after he began composing „Figaro“ and was published by Hoffmeister in 1786. A strange mixture of cheerfulness and melancholy connects the great quartet with the opera. Alfred Einstein said of the Adagio that it „speaks of suffering never before heard in such depth“. Schubert's Quartet in G major D 887 from 1826 was ahead of its time - it took almost half a century for this „uncompromising exploration of the themes of major and minor, life and death, hope and despair“ to find an appropriate response from critics and audiences.

Kammermusik Festival

Chamber Music III: In tempore belli

Artistic creation in times of war: This concert features works and presentations by composers who responded to wars and battles with personal trauma or escape into fantastic parallel worlds. Listen to works by Lili Boulanger, Maurice Ravel, Grażyna Bacewicz and Gideon Klein, among others.

Expedition Tirili

For our "Expedition TIRILI" we usually travel light and without an elaborate stage set to the daycare centres of Berlin and Brandenburg. Now the "Expedition TIRILI" is also making a stop in the rank foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a few play dates and invites you to experience the sounds on the sand-coloured carpet and on brightly coloured seat cushions. Children are a great audience: open, curious, enthusiastic. They miss neither curtain nor orchestra pit and have no fixed idea of how an audience should behave. They are born explorers. And two musicians accompany them on their musical-theatrical voyage of discovery. Together they ask themselves: How are sounds created? What is music made of? Who or what is this mysterious TIRILI? For "Expedition TIRILI" we worked together with children from the Kastanienallee day-care centre in cooperation with TUKI. In the run-up, we experimented with sounds and themes in the nursery. This process flowed into the development of the production.

Expedition Tirili

For our "Expedition TIRILI" we usually travel light and without an elaborate stage set to the daycare centres of Berlin and Brandenburg. Now the "Expedition TIRILI" is also making a stop in the rank foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a few play dates and invites you to experience the sounds on the sand-coloured carpet and on brightly coloured seat cushions. Children are a great audience: open, curious, enthusiastic. They miss neither curtain nor orchestra pit and have no fixed idea of how an audience should behave. They are born explorers. And two musicians accompany them on their musical-theatrical voyage of discovery. Together they ask themselves: How are sounds created? What is music made of? Who or what is this mysterious TIRILI? For "Expedition TIRILI" we worked together with children from the Kastanienallee day-care centre in cooperation with TUKI. In the run-up, we experimented with sounds and themes in the nursery. This process flowed into the development of the production.

KlangKüken

This text explores the sounds of a joyful day, from hopping out of bed to the silvery moonbeams of evening. It asks how to musically express these moments, from breakfast songs to the flavors of lunch and the dreams of an afternoon nap.

Orgelstunde

Jeremy Joseph, who took over this organ lesson at short notice for his teacher Martin Haselböck, who was ill, is no stranger to Berlin audiences: six years ago, he was already a duo partner for Gottlieb Wallisch in the Great Hall of the Konzerthaus Berlin, with whom he performed a brilliant program Organ & Piano. In this solo program, he spans an arc from Johann Sebastian Bach and Max Reger - each represented with major works - to Arnold Schoenberg as a “modern classic”, whose variations on a theme by Johann Sebastian Bach are now also part of the standard repertoire.

Kammermusikkonzert

KlangKüken

This text explores the sounds of a joyful day, from hopping out of bed to the silvery moonbeams of evening. It asks how to musically express these moments, from breakfast songs to the flavors of lunch and the dreams of an afternoon nap.

Vogler Quartett

Individuality finding harmonious expression in an ensemble – this is the quintessence of the Vogler Quartet, which has been pursuing a unique global career with an unchanged line-up since its formation in 1985. With an intelligent approach to chamber music, outstanding playing technique and interpretive sensitivity, Tim Vogler, Frank Reinecke, Stefan Fehlandt and Stephan Forck have created an unmistakable string quartet sound which consistently offers new insights into the genre. The group has had a concert series at the Konzerthaus Berlin since 1993.

Macbeth

About the work MACBETH was the first of Shakespeare’s plays to be set to music by Verdi, in 1847. Despite his decades of interest in the English playwright, he did not adapt another work of Shakespeare’s until late in his career. Verdi’s operatic rendition of this tale of murky prophecies and bloody struggles for the throne of Scotland came in the hugely productive decade that Verdi himself came to refer to as his »galley slave years«. Still striving for critical recognition, he turned out a string of operas that expanded on the bel canto genre. MACBETH was part of an evolution in Italian opera, a development that was even more evident in the modified version released in 1865. In typical fashion Verdi roughened up the storyline and injected some emotional twists and turns, intensifying the drama in the process and creating a tense momentum that sends the protagonists hurtling towards their respective gruesome ends. About the production Following on from her triumphs with BABY DOLL and NEGAR in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and her recent productions at the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Semperoper Dresden, the MusikTheater an der Wien and La Monnaie in Brüssel, Marie-Ève Signeyrole returns to the venue on Bismarckstrasse for her first staging of a new production on the main stage. Verdi’s hard-hitting Shakespearean tragedy provides the perfect material for the arresting visuals that are a hallmark of the French director, whose aesthetic vision can hold its own with any modern cinematic blockbuster.

Daniel Harding conducts Holst’s “Planets”

With Gustav Holst’s atmospheric 1916 orchestral suite The Planets, Daniel Harding embarks on a cosmic musical journey through our solar system. Each of the seven planets has its own musical character, from rugged Mars to mystical Neptune. Holst was greatly inspired by Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, which oscillate intriguingly between late Romanticism and Modernism. Completing the programme, Brett Dean’s Komarov’s Fall was commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2006 as a musical “asteroid” to Holst’s Planets.