Ensemble mosaik und Enno Poppe In memoriam Aribert Reiman

Ensemble Modern II Portrait Ruth Crawford Seeger: Ensemble music

In this programme the Ensemble Modern introduces the large-scale ensemble works of the American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger that are full of the delight in experimentation and the courage to pursue untrodden paths that characterised the 1920s. The futher pieces of this portrait concert also shed light on the present day, with the world premiere of a composition by the young American Katherine Balch and Tania León’s Ritmicas from 2019 – demonstrating where Seeger’s ideas continue to have a direct or indirect effect.

Ensemble Modern III Portrait Ruth Crawford Seeger: Solos / Duos / Ensemble

A matinée of chamber music – but in this case a special event: in a strictly choreographed concert design, the Ensemble Modern traces the numerous experimental forms that composer Ruth Crawford Seeger employed in her brief career in the interwar years, from dissonant counterpoint to serial techniques. The third part of this portrait series presents the US composer’s chamber works.

Ensemble Modern I Porträt Ruth Crawford Seeger: Songs

The composer Ruth Crawford Seeger was not only part of the ultramodernist movement that sought to investigate the possibilities of music beyond European traditions, she was also a researcher into the folkloric music of the USA and influenced by the Theosophists. A woman of her time, the fast-moving inter-war years, and yet so far ahead of them – Musikfest Berlin and Ensemble Modern dedicates a three-part concert portrait to her that enables her musical world to enter a dialogue with contemporaries and present-day composers.

Kansas City Symphony 100 years “Rhapsody in Blue”

In Kansas City Symphony, Berlin will encounter a young American orchestra – founded in 1982, it now attracts a wide audience with its innovative programming. On its debut tour with new Music Director Matthias Pintscher it will explore the rich American composing tradition with pieces by anniversary artist Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” which is celebrating its centenary this year.

Collegium Vocale Gent “Et in arcadia ego”: Italian madrigals of the 16th century

Arcadia is the land of eternal sunshine and unclouded joy – but death also afflicts those who dwell there. A musical memento mori: in an affecting programme of vocal music, Collegium Vocale Gent conducted by Philippe Herreweghe explores the sound worlds of the late Renaissance and early Baroque

Bruckner's works for the liturgical Gebrauch Mass No. 1 in D minor and further compositions

2024 is Bruckner year. This makes the classical world think first and foremost of his symphonies and his monumental religious works. By contrast, his works for liturgical use are much less well-known. The RIAS Kammerchor embarks on a voyage of discovery together with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and, in addition to a number of shorter works, presents the Mass No 1 in D minor – with the aim of rediscovering the sonic experience of the period in which it was written by using a markedly slimmed-down cast.

Arien-Rezital Ala Coroid und Ensemble Paradigma

“Des Canyons aux étoiles …” Sir Simon Rattle conducts Messiaen

To conclude the festival, Musikfest Berlin and the Karajan Academy under Simon Rattle fly through the red gorges of the canyons in Utah and up to the stars: Olivier Messiaen’s “Des Canyons aux étoiles …” is a birthday gift to the USA and also a spiritual hymn to the closely woven links between the divine and nature, between birdsong and the shades of colour in the rainbow.

Exaudi / Phace Isabel Mundry Showcase, Part III

An ancient Egyptian sculpture finds new meaning as a desk-top ornament. But what status does it have between familiar discourse and the unknown? This question becomes the starting point for an archaeology of musical archetypes. In the concluding part of this tribute to the composer, the ensemble Phace and the vocal group Exaudi address perspectives on belonging and exclusion.

Italia noir Ottorino Respighi, Luigi Nono, Giuseppe Verdi

Italia noir: the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper presents a sultry evening of Italian music. In the acoustic equivalent of cinemascope, Ottorino Respighi transports the orchestra to the bloodthristy arena of ancient Rome, Luigi Nono counters the horrors of the present with life and love. And Giuseppe Verdi’s “Otello” is one of the most tragic of operas – here we hear the finale.