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.
From January 2025, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden will present György Kurtág’s only opera Fin de partie, based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. During the run of performances, the Staatskapelle and a group of vocal soloists bring Kurtág’s 1990 Beckett homage What Is the Word to the Pierre Boulez Saal, continuing the annual tradition of the orchestra’s guest concerts. Kurtág’s fascinating score is framed by works of Béla Bartók and Franz Schubert. Young British conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, who led the Staatskapelle’s previous Pierre Boulez Saal appearance, returns to the podium. Presented by the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in cooperation with the Pierre Boulez Saal. Tickets are available exclusively from the Staatsoper Unter den Linden: staatsoper-berlin.de
For his first Pierre Boulez Saal appearance as a leader, Canadian guitarist and oud player Gordon Grdina has assembled an international group of artists from diverse musical traditions who perform together for the first time. RU’YA (“foresight” or “vision” in Arabic), featuring Belgian-Tunisian vocalist Ghalia Benali, blends sound, poetry, and the human voice in an experimental musical setting that bridges continents, cultures, and genres. Inspired by poems from Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt, and Belgium, RU’YA creates a musical world of unity, joy, and shared humanity.
Roberta Mameli, Margret Koell, and Michele Pasotti—previously heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal as part of various Early Music formations—make their debut as a trio, presenting a musical homage to matters of the heart. In vocal works by composers such as Giulio Caccini, Luigi Rossi, and Barbara Strozzi, the tender interplay of words and sounds reveals the depth and richness of human emotion as it was celebrated in 17th-century music and literature.
In 2013, Jörg Widmann composed his first—and to date his only—song cycle. Das heiße Herz (“The Hot Heart”) is based on the works of a wide range of authors, including Clemens Brentano, Heinrich Heine, Klabund, and Peter Härtling, as well as lesser known poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Christian Immler and Andreas Frese, who have won acclaim for their collaboration on the cycle’s premiere recording, perform Widmann’s songs opposite works by Schumann and Mahler.
“No other composer has had a more profound influence on me and taught me more than Gustav Mahler,” says Thomas Hampson. Having won universal acclaim for his performances of Mahler’s songs, the baritone has also immersed himself in the composer’s life more thoroughly than almost any other singer. Joined by his longtime piano partner Wolfram Rieger, he takes the audience on a musical journey to Mahler’s eventful times that also includes works by his contemporaries Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander Zemlinsky, Anton Webern, and Richard Strauss, as well as his personal companion and wife Alma Mahler.
“Fold by fold”—pli selon pli—Pierre Boulez reveals a portrait of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, arguably the most important literary influence on his music, in his eponymous work for soprano and orchestra. Michael Wendeberg, who worked closely with Boulez as pianist of the Ensemble intercontemporain, conducts excerpts from the composer’s most expansive score, in the piece’s Pierre Boulez Saal premiere. The program also includes the 1965 ensemble work Éclat as well as compositions by Maurice Ravel and Austrian composer Thomas Wally, born in 1981.
Born in Palestine and based in Europe since 2002, composer, singer, and musician Kamilya Jubran is among the leading figures of the experimental Arabic music scene. For her Pierre Boulez Saal debut, she per forms two contrasting sets: Together with her longtime musical partner, Swiss trumpet player and sound artist Werner Hasler, she presents Extend WA, an exploration of improvised musical dialogue born out of their album WA (“and” in Arabic). For the concert’s second half, the duo is joined by cellist Soizic Lebrat and bassist Charlotte Testu, collaborators from Jubran’s project Terrae Incognitae featuring female musicians from different backgrounds, in the world premiere of a new piece titled Bast (Arabic for “expanding” or “widening”).
Orlando, the eternal adventurer: in a highly original program for mezzo-soprano and guitar, Ema Nikolovska and Sean Shibe trace the legendary troubadour’s story through space and time. Journeying from the medieval Chanson de Roland to Ariosto’s famous epic, to Virginia Woolf ’s 1928 novel, they explore fantastical worlds and encounter the great adventures of life: love, conflict, and the search for one’s own identity. Works by Franz Schubert, Detlef Glanert, Thomas Adès, and others, as well as newly commissioned pieces by Sasha Scott and Cassandra Miller provide the musical tapestry.
Mignon, Ophelia, and Mary, Queen of Scots—these three towering figures of literature and history provide the inspiration for an evening of words and music created by Christiane Karg, Malcolm Martineau, and actor Helmut Mooshammer. In addition to Goethe settings by Beethoven, Schubert, Wolf, Duparc, and Josephine Lange and Ophelia songs by Brahms, Strauss, Chausson, and Wolfgang Rihm, the program also includes Robert Schumann’s Gedichte der Königin Maria Stuart, the composer’s final vocal cycle written in 1852.
In 2016, the composer Robert Fürstenthal died in San Diego, California, at the age of almost 100. After fleeing the Nazis and settling in the United States in 1939, he had a successful career as an accountant before returning to composition in the 1970s, writing music that evokes his hometown of Vienna. Rafael Fingerlos, who collaborated with the composer on the premiere recording of his songs shortly before Fürstenthal’s death, is joined by Joseph Middleton to present a selection of these works, juxtaposed with compositions by Max Bruch, Johannes Brahms, and Franz Schubert.
South African pianist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini presents the world premiere of A Return to Essence: Tuning into the Modalities of Humanness. A suite for jazz trio, trumpet, string quartet, and vocals, the piece explores aspects of “returning” to the essence and seeking that which humanity has forgotten. Taking a musical look at manifestations of violence, Makhathini’s work is an invitation to consider forgiveness as a path way to change and healing.
In an extraordinary and highly personal program, mezzosoprano Fleur Barron and pianist Kunal Lahiry explore the echoes of global colonial history in music and poetry. Artists who share dual Asian and Western heritages, they examine diverse perspectives of identity and belonging, repression and freedom, in both familiar and lesserknown works from the past 150 years.
“Parental Leave” concerts are aimed at all new mothers and fathers (as well as uncles, aunts, grand parents…) who would like to experience music together with their babies in a relaxed setting. The number of seats is limited, and all amenities to make your visit as pleasant as possible are provided in the lobby. These concerts, featuring Pierre Boulez Saal artists performing excerpts from their programs, are approximately 45 minutes long and intended exclusively for visitors with babies aged 12 months and younger.
On the operatic stage, Austrian mezzosoprano Sophie Rennert is acclaimed for her portrayals of Baroque heroines—including her celebrated debut as Galatea in the staged production of Handel’s Aci, Galatea e Polifemo in November 2023 at the Pierre Boulez Saal. Together with pianist Joseph Middleton, she now gives voice to her other great passion: the lied repertoire. In addition to a selection of works by Franz Schubert, the duo performs Mahler’s moving Rückert Songs.
Bassist, singer, and composer esperanza spalding and her band join forces with the New York–based Antonio Brown Dance company to create the interdisciplinary collective Off Brand gOdds. Inspired by the idea to integrate dancing bodies with live jazz music, the pro gram features selections from spalding’s two most recent albums, 12 Little Spells and Songwrights Apothecary Lab, and improvisationbased choreography—transforming the Pierre Boulez Saal into a space for an immersive musical and physical performance.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, few composers engaged with the works of Friedrich Hölderlin— it almost seems as if music needed to shed tonality and formal restraints to come to terms with the expressive power of the poet’s language. In this Lied und Lyrik program, Katrīna Paula Felsberga and Julius Drake explore the wide-ranging musical afterlife of Hölderlin in the “free future century” he envisioned in his 1806 Hymn to Freedom. Acclaimed actor Burghart Klaußner (The White Ribbon, The Crown) reads the original poems.
Eunice Kathleen Waymon—better known as Nina Simone—was a singer, pianist, composer, and Black civil rights activist whose work had a lasting impact beyond the world of 20thcentury music. Soprano Claron McFadden, first heard at the Pierre Boulez Saal last season, presents a tribute to this extraordinary artist, who died in 2003, tracing her life story in an interdisciplinary performance of words and music. Coproduction with F&A/E Production & Muziektheater Transparant
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