Europakonzert Riccardo Muti and the Berliner Philharmoniker in Bari

Mahler Festival: Kirill Petrenko and the Berliner Philharmoniker: Symphony No. 9

One of the world's most legendary orchestras, the Berliner Philharmoniker, has been led by Kirill Petrenko for several years. Upon his appointment, Die Welt called him 'the world's most unknown famous conductor'. Petrenko hardly ever gives interviews, so he can totally focus on the music. Today, that music comes from a man who once also conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker: Gustav Mahler. You will hear the Ninth Symphony.'Youth gone, love blown away', Mahler noted in the score of his Ninth Symphony. Like no other work in his 'small family' of symphonies, the Ninth treats extremes. It is a farewell to life, but at the same time an ode to its beauty. Presence, absence, even of sounds: Mahler plays with them, with picture-perfect results. Sometimes called the 'completion of Romanticism', the symphony was the last one Mahler would complete.

Artist in Residence Seong-Jin Cho and members of the Berliner Philharmoniker

Artist in Residence Seong-Jin Cho and members of the Berliner Philharmoniker unfold a panorama of Hungarian musical styles in this concert. Johannes Brahms was often inspired by Hungarian music in his works, for instance in the finale of his clarinet trio, which oscillates between deep emotion and serenity. The trio for violin, horn and piano, which the Hungarian György Ligeti wrote in homage to Brahms, is characterised by folk rhythms. The piano quintet by the young Béla Bartók, who would go on to revolutionise Hungarian music, is still very much rooted in the Romantic period. But even here – according to Seong-Jin Cho – you can sense “Bartók's musical future”.

Joana Mallwitz makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker

When she is on the podium, says Joana Mallwitz, she wants to take the audience with her “from the very first note”. This approach has already brought her a remarkably successful career. After holding positions as General Music Director in Erfurt and Nuremberg, she has been Chief Conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin since 2023. In her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker, she leads us through very different worlds of sound with works by Prokofiev, Hindemith and Ravel. Anna Vinnitskaya will be the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a work full of dreamy melancholy and pianistic brilliance.

Joana Mallwitz makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker

When she is on the podium, says Joana Mallwitz, she wants to take the audience with her “from the very first note”. This approach has already brought her a remarkably successful career. After holding positions as General Music Director in Erfurt and Nuremberg, she has been Chief Conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin since 2023. In her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker, she leads us through very different worlds of sound with works by Prokofiev, Hindemith and Ravel. Anna Vinnitskaya will be the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a work full of dreamy melancholy and pianistic brilliance.

Joana Mallwitz makes her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker

When she is on the podium, says Joana Mallwitz, she wants to take the audience with her “from the very first note”. This approach has already brought her a remarkably successful career. After holding positions as General Music Director in Erfurt and Nuremberg, she has been Chief Conductor of the Konzerthausorchester Berlin since 2023. In her debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker, she leads us through very different worlds of sound with works by Prokofiev, Hindemith and Ravel. Anna Vinnitskaya will be the soloist in Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3, a work full of dreamy melancholy and pianistic brilliance.

Concert in the Basilica Ottobeuren

Daniel Harding conducts the Europakonzert in Georgia

“This concert will be the highlight of my life,” says Lisa Batiashvili. In the picturesque setting of the Tsinandali estate, our Artist in Residence performs Brahms’ Violin Concerto under the baton of Daniel Harding. The Berliner Philharmoniker’s concert is something very special, and not just for the Georgian-born artist: this is the first time that a top European orchestra has performed in Georgia, a candidate for EU membership. At the same time, this performance aims to initiate closer co-operation between the country’s rich classical music scene and leading orchestras and cultural institutions in Europe. Last but not least, it is a strong sign of solidarity with the country in the context of the Ukraine conflict.

Riccardo Chailly conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Bruckner's Ninth

Riccardo Chailly, conductor emeritus and former chief conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, rounds off the symphonic cycle marking Anton Bruckner’s 200th birthday with his enigmatic swansong, the Ninth Symphony – including the finale, which the latest scholarship has deemed complete.Anton Bruckner’s symphonies are a pillar of the Concertgebouw Orchestra’s core repertoire. And they’re certainly in good hands with such an authority as Riccardo Chailly. He sees Bruckner as ‘a saint who constantly confronted the devil, a man of such piety that he dared to explore the darkness’. In the Ninth, darkness wins: Bruckner died before completing the work. The slow third movement is a dignified ‘farewell to life’, as Bruckner himself noted in the score. ‘It has to be the most beautiful thing I have ever written,’ he said of this moving Adagio. ‘It always grips me when I play it.’Many fragments of the missing finale were found among Bruckner’s personal effects. And for more than a century, these made up a fascinating puzzle, yet no one could piece them together to form a convincing whole. But a team of musicologists changed all that in 2012. The performance version by Samale, Phillips, Cohrs and Mazzuca is astounding, and changes the symphony’s tragic character: after three dark movements, the last brings redemption. Performed here is the ‘SPCM’ version heard in J.A. Phillips’s most recent revision dating from 2021–22.

Vladimir Jurowski conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Mozart and Bruckner

Anton Bruckner’s First Symphony is rarely performed. And that’s a shame, since this delightful journey through the Austrian countryside of Bruckner’s youth is a comprehensive introduction to his symphonic œuvre. Conductor Vladimir Jurowski considers it ‘an amazing artistic achievement to write such a symphony ten years before the composition of Brahms’ First Symphony (…). Bruckner takes Schubert's lyrical symphonic style to its extremes and even beyond them. One can clearly sense the essence of all later symphonies by Bruckner in this one, as if contained in a nutshell.’At the premiere of Bruckner’s First Symphony in Linz, audiences were above all amazed that their city organist could write symphonies. Shortly afterwards, the ambitious Bruckner moved to Vienna, the city of his predecessors Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, whose Viennese classical influences are still palpable in his First Symphony. Vladimir Jurowski juxtaposes Bruckner’s First with Mozart’s penultimate symphony, the tempestuous No. 40 in G minor, a forerunner of Romanticism. Jurowski has been a popular guest conductor with the Concertgebouw Orchestra since 2006, one with a versatile repertoire – indeed, this is the first time he will be conducting Bruckner in Amsterdam.

Vladimir Jurowski conducts the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Mozart and Bruckner

Anton Bruckner’s First Symphony is rarely performed. And that’s a shame, since this delightful journey through the Austrian countryside of Bruckner’s youth is a comprehensive introduction to his symphonic œuvre. Conductor Vladimir Jurowski considers it ‘an amazing artistic achievement to write such a symphony ten years before the composition of Brahms’ First Symphony (…). Bruckner takes Schubert's lyrical symphonic style to its extremes and even beyond them. One can clearly sense the essence of all later symphonies by Bruckner in this one, as if contained in a nutshell.’At the premiere of Bruckner’s First Symphony in Linz, audiences were above all amazed that their city organist could write symphonies. Shortly afterwards, the ambitious Bruckner moved to Vienna, the city of his predecessors Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, whose Viennese classical influences are still palpable in his First Symphony. Vladimir Jurowski juxtaposes Bruckner’s First with Mozart’s penultimate symphony, the tempestuous No. 40 in G minor, a forerunner of Romanticism. Jurowski has been a popular guest conductor with the Concertgebouw Orchestra since 2006, one with a versatile repertoire – indeed, this is the first time he will be conducting Bruckner in Amsterdam.